THIS VOLUMff 

THE TROPERTY OF THE 

LIBBAEY OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON, 

IS LENT TO 

THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

EOR USE AT 

THE PEACE CONFERENCE 



International Theological Library 



THE 

GREEK AND EASTERN 
CHURCHES 



WALTER FrADENEY, MA., D.D, 

PBINCIPAL OF LANCASHIRE COLLEGE 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1908 



7 i /J! 5.0 




PREFACE 



♦ 

This book is divided into two Parts. In the First Part 
I have traced the history of the main body of the Church 
throughout the Eastern provinces of Christendom, until by 
losing one limb after another this is seen to become more 
and more limited in area, although still claiming to be the 
one orthodox Church. In the Second Part I have taken 
up the stories of the separate Churches. In order to do 
this intelligibly I have found it necessary to go back in 
each case as far as possible to the particular Church's origin. 
Since that was usually some controversy of the older Church 
which was discussed in the first part of the volume, the 
consequence has been a certain amount of repetition. But 
I have deemed it better to say the same thing twice over — 
first in the general history and then in the local — than to 
leave either of them seriously incomplete. Besides, the 
story is not just the same when viewed from the standpoint 
of the local branch that it was when it first appeared in 
the course of the main history. 

If there is any special characteristic of this book to 
which I would desire to lay claim, it is an honest endeavour 
to do justice to all parties. Now that the heat of con- 
troversy has subsided and the dust of battle settled, it 
should be possible to take a calm and clear view of the 
facts, with a full recognition of all that was excellent in 
various bodies of Christians who in their own day mutually 
anathematised one another. 

I have set at the head of each of the chapters two 
lists of books. Those marked {a) are principal original 



vi 



PREFACE 



authorities ; those indicated by (b) are more or less modern 
works, often selected out of a large number, as in my own 
judgment the books most likely to be of service to the 
student. 

I desire to express my thanks to Professor Gwatkin for 
very kindly reading the proofs of the chapters on the Arian 
period, and for his learned and acute suggestions in con- 
versation with reference to this and other parts of the 
history ; to the Eev. E. Eubank for the loan of a number 
of works from his excellent collection of books on the 
Eastern Church ; to the Greek, Coptic, and Armenian 
priests and- Protestant pastors and missionaries with whom 
I have had conversations concerning the present condition 
of the Eastern Churches ; to the Librarians and Authorities 
of the British Museum, the John Eyland's Library, the 
Dr. William's Library, and my own College Library for 
their unfailing kindness and courtesy in putting at my 
disposal the many books — often from out-of-the-way regions 
of literature — that it has been necessary to consult in an 
attempt to cover a vast field of history, much of which is 
little known and but rarely traversed. 

Lastly, I record my indebtedness to the careful proof- 
reading and valuable literary criticism of my wife while 
this book was passing through the press. 

WALTEE F. ADENEY. 

Lancashire College, 
September 1908. 



CONTENTS 

♦ 

PAGES 

Introduction ••••••• 1-12 

PAET T 

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE 

DIVISION I 
THE AGE OF THE FATHERS 

CHAPTER I 

Christianity in the East under the Pagan Emperors 

The Apostolic Age — The Attitude of Rome — The Persecutions — 

Extent of the Church in the East .... 13-26 

CHAPTER II 
Constantine the Great 

Accession of Constantine — Founding of Constantinople — Conver- 
sion of Constantine — The Edict of Milan — New Relations 
of Church and State ...... 27-40 

CHAPTER III 
Artanism 

An Eastern Heresy — Its Origin in Antioch — The Arian System — 
Arius at Alexandria — The Emperor's influence as Peace- 
maker — The Council of Nicsea — The Nicene Creed . . 41-57 

vii 



viii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IV 

The Later Arian Period 

PAGES 

Constantiua — Athanasius — Julian— His Pagan Church and Theo- 
logy — The Persecution by Valens — The Semi-Arians . • 58-70 

CHAPTER V 
The Cappadooian Theologians 

The most brilliant Literary Period of the Greek Church — Basil — 

Gregory Nazianzen— Gregory of Nyssa — Apollinaris . . 71-84 

CHAPTER VI 

The Movements that led to the Council of Chalcedon 

Theodosius the Great — Chrysostom — The Christological Con- 
troversies — Nestorianism — The Council of Ephesus — 
Eutychianism — The Council of Chalcedon , . . 85-101 

CHAPTER VII 
The Monophysite Troubles 

The Monophysite Idea — The Theotokos— Timothy ^lurus — 
Timothy Salofaciolus — Peter the Fuller — Zeno's Heneticon — 
li'h.Q Acephali ....... 102-116 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Later Cheistulogical Controversies 

Justinian and Theodora — "The Three Chapters" — The Mono- 
thelete Controversy — Severus of Constantinople — Cyrus and 
Sophronius — The Ecthesis — Tlie Type— The Sixth General 
Council (Third Constantinople) .... 117-131 

CHAPTER IX 
Organisation and Worship 

Bishops — Metropolitans — Patriarchs — The new Constantinople 
Patriarchate — Gregory the Great — John the Faster — The 
Doctrine of Transubstantiation .... 132-146 



CONTENTS 



ix 



CHAPTER X 

Eastern Monastioism 

PAGES 

(1) General Asceticism — (2) Specific Asceticism — (3) Anchoritism — 

Palladius— (4) Coenobitism — (5) Regulated Monasteries . 147-159 



DIVISION II 
THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIOD 



CHAPTER I 

The Rise and Spread of Mohammedanism 

No Middle Ages in the Oriental Churches — Mohammed — The 
Doctrines of Islam — Heraclius and his Victories — The Advance 
of the Arabs — Treatment of Christians by Mohammedans . 160-173 



CHAPTER II 
Byzantine Art 

Byzantine and Gothic Architecture — The Basilica — St. Sophia — 

Icons ..... • • . 174-186 



CHAPTER III 
The Iconoolastio Reforms 

Revival of the Empire — Leo the Isaurian — Iconoclasm — Con- 

stantine Copronicus — The Abbot Stephen • . . 187-200 



CHAPTER IV 
The Restoration of Image Worship 

Leo the Armenian — Constantine Porphyrogenitus — The Empress 
Irene — Seventh General Council (Second Nicfea) — Leo's 
Reforms — John of Damascus — Theodore of Studium . . 201-215 



X 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER V 

The Pauligians 

PAGES 

The Origin of the Name — The Key of Trtith — Constantine of 
Mananalis or "Silvanus" — Paul the Armenian — Sergius — 
The Empress Theodora — Paulicians in Thrace — The Euchites 
— TheBogomiles ...... 216-228 



CHAPTER VI 

The Geeat Schism 

The Cleavage of Christendom — Causes : (1) Ditterence of Race ; 
(2) Separation of the two Empires ; (3) Rivalry of Patriarchs ; 
(4) The Filioque Clause— The Final Rupture . . . 229-241 



CHAPTER Yll 

The Crusades 

Causes provoking the Crusades — Urban ii. and Peter the Hermit — 
The First Crusade — Bernard of Clairvaux and the Second 
andThird Crusades — The Fourth Crusade — A "Western Invasion 
of Greek Territory — The Latin ' ' Empire " of Constantinople . 242-255 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Greek Church at the Fall of the Byzantine Empire 

Decay of Byzantine Empire — The Latin "Emperors " — Restoration 
of Byzantine Empire by Michael — The Patriarch Arsenius — 
Negotiations with the Papacy — Constantine Palaeologus — 
Mohammed ii. — Fall of Constantinople . • • 256-272 



CHAPTER IX 

Life and Letters in the Byzantine Church 

Echoes of old Controversies — Church Government — The Liturgies 
of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom — Service Books — The Byzantine 
Historians — Later Byzantine Writers — The Story of Barlaam 
and Joshaphat — Greek Hymns — The Monks of Mount 
Athos — Religious and Moral Condition of the Church . 273-291 



CONTENTS 



xi 



PART II 

THE SEPARATE CHURCHES 

PAGES 

Introduction to the Separate Churclies . . • • 292-294 

DIVISION" I 
EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 

Early Christianity in Persia — Persecution under Sapor — Conversion 

of the Goths— Ulfilas 295-308 

DIVISION II 
THE MODERN GREEK CHURCH 
CHAPTER I 

Cyeil Lucar and the Keformation 

The Janissaries — The Patriarch of Constantinople under the Sultan 
— Contact with Lutherans — Cyril Lucar — His Confession of 
Faith — Cyril at Constantinople — His Attempt at a Reforma- 
tion ........ 309-324 

CHAPTER II 
The Later Greek Church under the Turks 

Patriarch and Bishops — Venetian Conquests — Revival of 
Greece — The Philike Hetairia — Massacre of Turks in the 
Morea — Execution of the Patriarch Gregorios — The Inde- 
pendent Church of Greece ..... 325-339 

CHAPTER III 
The Outlying Branches of the Greek Church 
Cyprus — Georgia — Bulgaria — Servia — Bosnia and Herzegovina . 340-354 

DIVISION III 
THE RUSSIAN CHURCH 

CHAPTER I 
The Origin of Christianity in Russia 
The Sclavs — Early Missions— The Princess Olga— Vladimir . 365-370 



xii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER II 
The Mongolian Invasion of Russia 

PAGES 

Spread of the Gospel in Russia — A Temporary Breach with Con- 
stantinople — The Mongol Invasion — Effect on Russia . 371-384 

CHAPTER III 

Revival of Russia 

Reformation of Church Discipline — Poland and Lithuania — 
Isidore — Russia and the New Age — The Metropolitan 
Zosimus — Ivan the Terrible . . • , , 385-403 

CHAPTER IV 

The Patriarchate 

Origin of Patriarchate of Moscow — Attempts to win Russia 
to Rome — The false Dmitri — Philaret — Peter Mogila's 
"Confession of Faith"— The Patriarch Nicon , , 404-419 

CHAPTER V 
Peter the Great and the Holy Synod 

The Life and Character of Peter — Reorganisation of the Empire 
— The Holy Synod — The Conservative Reaction — Condition 
of Russian Church ...... 420-433 

CHAPTER VI 

The Orthodox Church in Modern Russia 

Catherine ii. — Seraphim and Photius — Alexander and the 

Emancipation of the Serfs ..... 434-440 

CHAPTER VII 
Russian Sects 

Raskolniks— "Old Believers " — The Popoftsky — The Bef- 
pop6ftsky — The Philippoftsky — The Theodosians — The Po- 
mortsky — The Jumpers — The Khlysty — The Skoptsy — 
The Molokans — The Doukhobors — The Stundists — Count 
Tolstoi ....... 441-458 



CONTENTS 



xiii 



DIVISION IV 
THE SYRIAN AND ARMENIAN CHURCHES 

CHAPTER I 
Early Syeian Christianity 

PAGES 

The Churches of the Euphrates Valley — Four separating In- 
fluences — ^The Legend of Abgar — Palut — Tatian — Bardaisan 
— The Homilies of Aphraates — The Acts of Thomas , . 459-476 

CHAPTER H 
The Syrian Nestor fans 

The Nestorians at Edessa — Rabbulas — The Catholicos — Thomas 
of Marca's Book of the Governors — Syrian Monasticism — The 
Monastery of Beth 'Abhe ..... 477-492 

CHAPTER HI 

The Later Nestorians, the Chald^eans, and the Jacobites 

The Nestorians under the Caliphate— Mohammedan Persecu- 
tions — The Jacobites — Jacob al Bardai — Persecution of 
Syrian Monophysites — The Tetratheists — Literature of the 
Syrian Church , . . , ... 493-509 

CHAPTER IV 

The Nestorians of the Far East 

Syrian Missions — The Acts of Thomas — India — The Syrian 

Church in Travancore — Old Crosses .... 610-522 

CHAPTER V 
Later Eastern Christianity 

The Portuguese in India — Xavier — The Inquisition at Goa — 
The Synod of Diamper — The Dutch at Cochin — Syrian 
Christianity in China — Syrian Christianity in Tartary — 
Roman Catholic and Protestant Missions . . . 523-538 



xiv 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VI 

The Armenian Church 

The Legendary Period — Gregory the Illuminator — Mesroh — The 
Council of Tiben — The Council of Carana — Severance from 
the Greek Church — The Armenian Constitution — Kussian 
Possessions in Armenia — The Massacres . , 

DIVISION V 
THE COPTIC AND ABYSSINIAN CHURCHES 
CHAPTER I 

Origin and Early History of the Coptic Chttroh 
The Copts — Origin of Christianity in Egypt — Its Character- 
istics — Alexandrian Opposition to Nestorianism — The 
Monks — Monophysite Schism. .... 553-571 

CHAPTER II 

The Persian and Arab Conquests 

The Copts during the Invasions — The Failure of Heraclius as a 
Ruler — The Mohammedan Invasion — The National Patriarch 
Benjamin — The Melchite Patriarch CyrU — The Mukaukas — 
The Mohammedan Settlement .... 572-584 



PAffM 



539-552 



CHAPTER III 

The Copts under the Caliphate 

Coptic Art — John Semundseus — A Friendly Caliphate — Persecu- 
tion — The Scandal of Simony — The Fatimite Period . 585-602 

CHAPTER IV 

The Turkish Period 

Turkish Sultans — The Copts during the Crusades — The Dis- 
pute about Confessing over a Censer — Saladin — The Mame- 
lukes — The Copts in Modern Times .... 603-614 

CHAPTER V 
Abyssinian Christianity 

Ethiopia — Fruraentius and iEdesius — The Vanishing of Christ- 
ianity from Nubia — Isolation of Abyssinia — Portuguese 
Embassy — Bruce's Travels — Recent Events . . . 615-626 

Index 627 



THE 

GEEEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



THE 



GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

♦ 

INTEODUCTION 

An adequate and independent history of the Greek and 
Eastern Churches would begin with the origin of Chris- 
tianity, and trace from its commencement the development 
of the faith, which arose in the East and flourished for a 
considerable time most conspicuously in Syria, Asia Minor, 
Greece, and Egypt. But since two previous volumes of 
this Series^ have been devoted to the earlier periods of 
General Church History, the present writer is relieved from 
the necessity of treating the first three centuries with any 
fulness of detail. Here the only requisite will be to take 
a rapid survey of the story viewed from the standpoint of 
the East, remembering that for our present purpose the 
centre of gravity is at Antioch, Ephesus, or Alexandria, 
rather than at Eome or Carthage. When, however, we 
come to the fourth century the scale of proportion must 
be reversed, and subjects which the exigencies of space only 
permitted to be discussed with comparative brevity in the 
volume on The Ancient Catholic Church will now demand 
a somewhat more extensive exposition. The age of the 
great Fathers, with its essentially Oriental controversies 
on the doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, 
is by far the most important epoch in the whole history 

* McGiflFert, History of Christianity in tJie Apostolic Age ; Rainy, The 
Ancient Catholic Church. 
I 



2 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



of Eastern Christendom. This age was the crown and 
flower of the earlier period, and it produced the seeds of 
nearly all that was of vital interest in succeeding ages. 
With the exception of Hosius of Cordova, whose activity 
was chiefly witnessed in the East, and Hilary of Poitiers, 
the solitary theologian of first rank who discussed the 
Trinitarian problem in the West during the fourth century, 
all the great writers and teachers of that wonderful age of 
theological dialectics were in the Greek Church. Ambrose 
at the end of this century, and Augustine and Jerome in 
the early part of the following century, restored the 
balance to the West ; but by their time ominous signs of 
the coming severance between Eastern and Western 
Christendom were already appearing, and each branch was 
now becoming more and more distinct and separate in its 
life and history. 

When we look back at the early period of Catholic 
unity we cannot but recognise the preponderance of its 
Oriental characteristics. Externally regarded, in its origin 
and primitive development, Christianity must be reckoned 
an Eastern religion. In fulfilling its amazing destiny it 
quickly turned to the West for its richest missionary 
harvests, for there it found its most fertile soil, and its 
efforts at extension in the Farther East were long compara- 
tively infructuous. 

To-day it is specifically the religion of the West, and 
as such at length it is being introduced by slow and pain- 
ful efforts to the ancient civilisations of India and China. 
We know it in a Latin or a Teutonic garb, so that its 
original Eastern form is disguised by its Western habili- 
ments. Protestant Christendom sees it in the last of four 
stages through which it has passed, the first being Aramaic, 
the second Greek, the third Latin, and the fourth Teutonic. 
These four stages may be especially represented by the 
primitive apostles, the councils and creeds, the mediaeval 
papal Church, and Martin Luther and Protestantism. 
Now the Greek and Eastern Churches belong to the two 
earliest of these stages, or rather, to be more exact, 



INTRODUCTION 



3 



especially to the second ; foi even the later Syrian Church 
was fundamentally dependent on the Greek. But we 
begin with a thoroughly Oriental situation. Christianity 
sprang up out of the soil of an ancient Semitic religion. 
The Judaism of the rabbis only represented the faded glory 
of the superb faith proclaimed by the ancient prophets, 
and the gospel realised one of those prophets' predictions 
by appearing as " a root out of a dry ground." Still, it 
needed its soil, impoverished by neglect and ill-usage as 
this was. We cannot regard the fact that Jesus was a 
Jew as due to a freak of nature or a caprice of Providence. 
Then, all the apostles were Jews ; so apparently were all 
the writers of the New Testament except one, and probably 
he was a proselyte. The gospel of the kingdom of heaven 
was first preached in Aramaic, in the local Syrian dialect 
spoken at the time by our Lord and His disciples. The 
earliest record of the teachings of Jesus Christ of which 
we have any knowledge was written in Hebrew, or 
Aramaic.^ The Scriptures used by the primitive Churches 
and appealed to for the authentication of their message 
consisted of Hebrew writings ; and although the Old 
Testament was commonly read in a Greek translation, its 
Semitic ideas and imagery coloured the whole presentation 
of Christian truth. In the present day, not only our 
theology, our sermons, our prayers and hymns, but our 
literature and political oratory are steeped in Biblical 
Orientalism. lYhen, as is often the case in his most 
pathetic scenes, Sir Walter Scott adopts the language of 
the Bible, or when one of our statesmen graces his diction 
by drawing from that " well of English undefiled," the 
Authorised Version of the English Bible, it is generally 
some Semitism that gives its choice flavour to the 
passage. 

Directly we pass on to the second stage of develop- 
ment, the Greek, we have an immensely enlarged field of 
observation. The Semitic period was quite temporary 
and provincial, although, as the earliest, it left its 

1 Eusebius, Hist. Ecd. iii. 39. 



4 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



mark on all that followed. But no sooner was the gospel 
launched on the sea of the great world's life than it 
passed into a Hellenic form, being at once expounded in 
the Greek language and becoming gradually shaped in the 
mould of Greek thought. It is probable that Jesus Christ 
knew the popular Greek dialect of His day, although it is 
nearly certain that He habitually spoke in Aramaic, the 
language of His home and people. The apostles must 
have preached in Greek when they passed the narrow 
bounds of Palestine. Paul, Barnabas, Stephen, Philip 
the Evangelist, Apollos, Timothy — in fact, all the early 
missionaries of whom we know anything, except the 
Twelve, James, and Mark — were Hellenists, or even in some 
cases actually Greeks by race, such as Luke and Titus. 
All the books of the New Testament were written in Greek, 
in spite of the fact that two of them seem to have been 
intended for Jews, and one was addressed to Eome and 
another to a Eoman colony. All the writings of the 
Apostolic Fathers are in the Greek language, although they 
originated in places so far apart as Eome, Asia Minor, 
and probably Egypt and Syria. Greek was the literary 
language of the Church in the West as well as in the East 
down to the end of the second century, except in North 
Africa where Latin was used, and in the Valley of the 
Euphrates where Syriac was employed. Until we reach 
the third century we meet with no Latin writing of 
importance in the Eoman Church.^ Hippolytus, whose 
martyrdom is dated between a.d. 233 and 239, wrote in 
Greek. The early bishops of Eome bear Greek names. 
Justin Martyr, a native of Samaria, but a travelling 
evangelist who carried his mission as far as Eome where 
he ended it by death, wrote his appeals to the emperors 
and the Senate, as well as his dialogue with a Jew, in 
Greek. In Gaul we have the Churches of Lyonne and 
Vienne sending an account of the persecution they had 
passed through under Marcus Aurelius to their brethren 

1 There is the insignificant anti -gambling tract De Aleatoribus in Latin, 
for the benefit of the uneducated. 



INTRODUCTION 



5 



in the East in the Greek language. Irenaeus their 
bishop published his famous work Against all the Heresies 
in Greek. It seems probable that Christianity first made 
its way in Western Europe among the Jewish, Greek, and 
Syrian residents — colonists, merchants, and slaves. We 
know that at Eome it first appeared in the Ghetto 
among Hellenistic Jews. The Churches of Lyonne and 
Yienne seem to have sprung up in an ofishoot from the 
Greek colony at Marseilles. Their famous bishop Irenseus 
had come to them from Asia Minor, and they took care 
to keep themselves in touch with the Greeks of that 
Eastern region. 

Now the importance of these facts can scarcely be 
overestimated, although it has been overshadowed by 
another series of facts. Church historians have often 
called attention to the deep significance of the establish- 
ment of the Eoman Empire just before the appearance of 
Christianity in the world. The Pax Romana which 
encircled the whole Mediterranean gave the first 
missionaries freedom to travel and admitted of an 
attentive hearing wherever they went. Everywhere they 
appeared as subjects of one vast empire preaching to 
fellow-subjects of the same empire. They were protected 
from uprisings of fanatical mobs by the strong, just 
Eoman magistracy ; and they could travel with ease and 
safety along the well-made and well-guarded Eoman roads. 
Choosing the great towns for their chief centres of work, 
they found provincialism disappearing before enlarged 
cosmopolitan ideas, and so an atmosphere in which a 
gospel that overstepped the bounds of national jealousies 
might most readily receive sympathetic attention. More- 
over, from the second century onwards, we see the growth 
of Eoman law into a strong body of jurisprudence which 
is destined to combine with Christian doctrine in forming 
the two fundamental factors of mediaeval and modern 
civilisation. Gradually the genius of Eome in government 
passed over from the empire to the Church, and popes 
came in for the inheritance of the power that had dropped 



6 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



from the enfeebled hands of emperors. It is a truism 
to say that the contribution of Eome to the development 
— and subsequent degeneration — of the Church is a factor 
of immense importance.^ Nevertheless it is an unfortunate 
fact that reiterated insistence on the Eoman influence has 
distracted attention from the Grecian. Until recently it 
was supposed that the New Testament was composed in 
a peculiar provincial and theological dialect. But the 
discovery of contemporary papyri at Oxyrhynchus and the 
study of inscriptions found in Egypt, Asia Minor, and 
indeed scattered over a wide area of the empire, have 
shown that this "Hellenistic" Greek was the common 
language for business documents and private correspond- 
ence — bills of lading, receipts, family letters — throughout 
all those widely scattered regions. This is a new and 
convincing proof that the " common dialect " of Greek was 
very much more used than had been imagined hitherto. 
It is quite sufficient to account for the fact that the 
earliest Christian literature is in Greek, and it disposes of 
the erroneous idea that the authors were following a 
literary convention Uke the mediaeval monks in their use 
of Latin.^ They wrote in Greek simply because everybody 
wrote in Greek, whether in business or in social intercourse. 
The consequences of this fact are many and various. In the 
first place, the Christian missionaries found a lingua franca in 
which they could proclaim their message wherever they went, 
at all events on the main roads which they usually followed, 
and in the large centres of population where for the most 
part they carried on their work. Thus the widespread use 
of this one language co-operated with the common govern- 
ment of the one empire in providing such conditions for 
the dissemination of a universal faith as the world had 
never witnessed before. In the second place, the fact that 
this language was Greek had as strong intensive effects on 
the missionary work as its extensive influence due to the 

^ See Renan, Hibhert Lectures (1880). 

2 See Deissman, Bible Studies, passim ; Moulton, Grammar of New Test. 
Greek, vol. i. ch. i. ; Wellhausen, Einleitung in die drei Ersten Evangelien, 9. 



INTRODUCTION 



7 



general use of it throughout so large a part of the Eoman 
dominion. There is no such thing as a " dead language " 
for people who read and speak intelligently ; and certainly 
in early Christian times, although the splendour of the 
classic period had passed, the language in which Plato 
wrote, degenerate as it now was, came into the Church 
" trailing clouds of glory." For better or for worse, Greek 
ideas invaded the Church under the cloak of the Greek 
language. With the more scholarly writers this was 
allowed consciously.^ 

Even St. Paul shows traces of the Hellenic influence, 
especially in his doctrine of the flesh, which was not found 
in purely Jewish or earlier Christian teaching, and in the 
language with which he describes the exalted Christ, which 
reads like an echo of Philo, as well as in his evident 
allusions to the Hellenistic Book of Wisdom. This 
tendency is much more apparent in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. There are traces of it in the so-called " Epistle 
of Barnabas." Most of the earlier Christian writers known 
as the Apostolic Fathers wrote simply and practically 
with little reference to the world outside. But the Greek 
influence blossomed out in the Apologists, men who 
made it their business to bring the gospel into contact 
with the thought of their age. Aristides appeared in 
Athens wearing the conventional philosopher's cloak ; 
Justin Martyr came to Christianity through Platonism, and 
he made the first serious attempt to reconcile Philosophy 
to the Gospel, by combining St. John^s Logos with the 
Logos of Philo and the Stoics. In Clement of Alexandria 
we have classic literary scholarship, and in his successor 
Origen Platonic philosophy, brought over bodily into the 
exposition of Christian truth. Henceforth the elaboration 
of doctrine in the Church becomes a process of applying 
Greek thought to the elucidation of the data supplied by 
the facts of the gospel history and the truths of Scripture 
and experience. Even the dialectical methods of the 

^ See Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, for an extreme view of this fact, which 
we must admit while avoiding the danger of exaggerating it. 



8 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



sophists were adopted by the Christian theologians, and 
the oratorical services of the rhetoricians employed by the 
Church's preachers. Biblical exegesis followed the lines 
laid down by Alexandrian grammarians in their interpreta- 
tion of Homer, and the very form of the Christian sermon 
based on a brief " text," which has been stereotyped 
apparently for all time, is an imitation of the sophists' 
cunningly elaborated oration as the development of the 
hidden meaning of a single line of Horner.^ 

The Graeco-Eoman world on which the vessel of the 
gospel was launched by the apostles and their followers 
was a seething ocean of restless life and thought, in a 
period of transition after the old national and racial 
boundaries had been swept away and before any tide had 
been felt setting strongly in one definite direction. We 
might compare it to a choppy sea, broken by the clash of 
cross currents and tossed about by a whirl of winds from 
all quarters of the compass. In literature, in art, in 
philosophy, and worst of all in morals, it was a decadent 
age; its society was like that which was recently 
characterised among ourselves as fin de siecle. And yet, 
while bestial gluttony and monstrous vice ran riot among 
the plutocracy, no doubt there were many innocent folk 
who were living simple lives in remote country places. 
Certainly not a few in the cities were wistfully gropiug 
after the light of truth and the power of purity. But no 
one clear answer rang out in response to their eager 
questioning. Their ears were assailed by a babel of voices. 
The quest for truth and goodness was baffled by the 
many bewildering avenues that opened out before it ; and 
seekers after the summum honum were lost in a vast maze 
of ideas. Philosophy was eclectic, religion syncretic. 
Both skimmed a wide surface ; neither touched bottom. 
So there was no settlement, no conclusion. The almost 
identical experience of Justin Martyr in the second century 
and Augustine in the fourth, their going from teacher to 

^ See Hatch, Hihhert Lectures : The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages 
ujion the Christian Church, Lecture iv. 



INTRODUCTION 



9 



teacher and from school to school but finding rest in none, 
was the inevitable fate of earnest souls in the centuries 
that followed the break-up of the old world, but had not 
yet seen the consolidation of the new world. 

Nevertheless the age was essentially constructive. 
The theoretical scepticism of the Academy, the bold 
unbelief of Julius Csesar, and the practical atheism of 
Nero, had given place to a revival of belief in the Unseen. 
This often took the form of superstition, which is the 
Nemesis of outraged faith. Magic was widely practised by 
its pretenders and widely believed in by its dupes. People 
regulated their lives by omens. While the venerable 
oracles of Delphi and other ancient shrines were com- 
paratively neglected, augury from the flight of birds or 
the inspection of entrails was more widely prevalent than 
ever. Nor was this all. Magic is the mockery of religion, 
the materialistic substitute for the spiritual truth that has 
been discarded. The heart of mankind " abhors a vacuum." 
If it has not spirit uaHty it will welcome sorcery, accepting 
demonology in place of theology, and giving the conjurer 
the seat from which the prophet has been ejected. * All 
this was seen in the age that also witnessed the advent of 
the new faith destined to regenerate the world. Men 
were making frantic efforts to save themselves from drown- 
ing in a black ocean of spiritual corruption by catching 
at the floating wreckage of derelict cults. Meanwhile 
there were serious attempts to stimulate a real religious 
life. Augustus, alarmed at the mordant scepticism which 
that astute ruler perceived to be undermining the 
foundations of society and corroding the institutions of 
civilisation, carried on a great work of temple-building 
and reinstated sacrificial rites at neglected altars. This 
State religion, however, never touched the life of the 
people, who remained cold and indifferent. The Lares and 
Penates were still honoured in out-of-the-way old-fashioned 
places ; but Zeus and Athene, Jupiter and Minerva, were 
no longer names to thrill the Greeks and Eomans with 
awe. For the first century almost as much as for the 



10 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



twentieth, among the cultivated, they were the titles of 
the classical divinities of the poets. Still less was the 
worship of the genius of Eome in the person of the 
emperor, first the dead emperor, then the reigning despot, 
anything more than a State function assiduously observed 
in fear of the dread accusation of Imsce majestatis. 

But it was not from this quarter that the awakening 
came. That arose in the East and swept in wave after wave 
of religious excitement across to the demoralised, enervated 
West. We might almost say that Christianity itself was 
carried over the empire on the crest of a wave of religious 
revival, if we did not know that it moved on by virtue of 
its own superb spiritual life. Still, it is just to affirm that 
it appeared in an age of revivalism, and was the one 
successful among many rival efforts to bring back the 
world to a sense of the Unseen. From Asia Minor came 
the worship of the " great mother," ^ with which was 
associated the ancient sacrifice of the tauroholium and its 
purifying bath of blood. From Egypt was brought the 
cult of Isis and Serapis by troops of white-robed, shaven 
priests, who were to be seen going in procession through 
the streets of the cities of Europe, introducing mysteries 
of a dim antiquity to the wondering West — telling of 
the tenderness of Isis, Queen of Heaven, who pre- 
pared the way for the Church's worship of her Queen 
of Heaven, the Theotohos, the "mother of God" — pro- 
claiming the wonders of Serapis, the god of the unseen 
world of the dead, with his promise of eternal life. Above 
all, from Persia came the worship of Mithra, who, from 
being the angel Messiah of the earlier Zoroastrian religion, 
having absorbed the Babylonian worship of Bel, became 
the great Sun-god, the chief divinity of Koman emperors 
for generations, so that even Constantine had his image on 
the reverse of coins which bore on the obverse the 
Christian labarum. So potent was this cult, that Eenan 
has said, " If the world had not become Christian it would 
have become Mithrastic." Its rites of baptism and of 

' Magna Mater, the Roman devotee's name for Cybele. 



INTRODUCTION 



11 



communion of bread and wm6 were denounced by 
Christian writers as impious imitations of the Christian 
sacraments. While the coarser Asiatic cults ran rampant 
in the West, the Greeks were more attracted by the milder 
rites of Adonis. These Oriental religions had their societies 
of members, with clergy called " presbyters," so that when 
the apostles founded churches for their converts, superficial 
observers in the Greek and Eoman world would see at first 
in the Christian brotherhoods only what was to be expected 
from the organisers of a new religion. 

Lastly, this leligious revival was accompanied by 
attempts at moral reformation and a marked advance in 
ethical teaching. At Kome Seneca, the tutor and the 
mentor of Nero and subsequently the mad emperor's 
subservient minister, taught the loftiest principles of 
duty that the pagan world had ever known, principles 
so Like much that we find in the New Testament that 
ready currency was given to the forgeries which supported 
the erroneous legend of the Eoman Stoic's connection with 
St. Paul.^ In the East Plutarch was expounding the 
ancient virtues, basing them on religious faith, and adding to 
the stern, strenuous rigour of Stoicism a new humanitarian- 
ism that was to have a marked effect in softening the 
brutality of society. This would have attracted more 
attention in later ages if it had not been outshone by the 
greater glory of the enthusiasm of humanity that was 
glowing in the breasts of the new sect from Galilee. The 
next century saw the lame slave Epictetus teaching 
bracing lessons of moral independence, and the melancholy 
Emperor Marcus Aurelius sitting up at night by his camp 
fire on the Danube to write meditations on duty and 
resignation. Stoicism was winning the adhesion of the 
strongest, finest natures to a very high type of duty. But 
its glory was the secret of its failure. Only the strongest, 
finest natures could breathe the keen, air of its lonely 
heights. The mass of the people never attained to it ; and 
it had no power for recovering the failures. The world was 
^ See Lightfoot, Theological Essays^ "St. Paul and Seneca." 



12 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



not so utterly bad as the satirists Juvenal and Martial 
might lead us to suppose ; nor must we judge it by the 
character of the court gossip Suetonius served up for a 
public eager to feast on scandals of high life, or the 
sardonic irony of Tacitus who wrote as the critic in 
opposition. Happily Eome was not the measure of the 
empire. Not only was there much serious effort after 
better things, but the monuments in the cemeteries contain 
touching records of simple family affections that could not 
flourish in a world that was utterly corrupt. And yet a 
deep sense of failure gave a mournful tone to the specula- 
tions of the most earnest men who were labouring for the 
social welfare. " No flight of imagination," says Harnack, 
writing of a later period, equally corrupt, " can form any 
idea of what would have come over the ancient world or 
the Eoman Empire during the third century, had it not 
been for the Church.^ 

* £(cpansion 0/ Christianity^ vol. i. p. 158 (Eng. edit,). 



PART I 

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE 



DIVISION I 
THE AGE OF THE FATHERS 



CHAPTER I 

CHRISTIANITY IN THE EAST UNDER THE PAGAN 
EMPERORS 

(a) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ; Ante-Nicene Fathers ; Pliny, Letters ; 

Tillemont, Memoirs, etc. 
(6) Ulhorn, Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism^ 1879 ; Momm- 
sen, Provinces of the Roman Empire, Eng. Trans., 1886 ; 
Ramsay, Christianity in the Roman Empire, 1893 ; Harnack, 
Expansion of Christianity, Eng. Trans., 1904. 

When we begin to inquire into the extension of 
Christianity, we are confronted by the questions : What 
geographical area was brought under evangelising 
influences ? — By what time was each region reached ? — 
To what extent was it actually Christianised ? This last 
question is by far the most important of the three, and it 
is the most difficult to answer. We can obtain a fairly 
safe rough idea of the area over which some knowledge of 
the gospel had been carried and in which some Churches 
had been planted during the first three centuries of the 
Christian era. Italy, Spain, and Gaul in the West, Britain 
in the North, the Roman province of Africa in the South, 
had all received Christianity to some extent; but though 



14 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Rome was the headquarters of Western Christendom, until 
long after this period the majority of its population, the 
Senate, and " Society/' remained pagan. And beyond some 
parts of Italy and the African province, Christianity in 
Western Europe could not be regarded for most of this 
time as more than a ray penetrating the (darkness. It 
is doubtful if this light had at all pierced the paganism of 
the German forest villages. It is to the East that we must 
look for the chief triumphs of early missionary activity and 
the most vigorous life of the primitive Churches. 

Eeligious movements are found to go forward in waves 
or tides rather than with a continuous, even flow. There 
are times of revival alternating with flat, dull, comparatively 
fruitless intervals. Three such times of revival may be 
seen in the Christian history of the first three centuries. 

The first was the Apostolic Age. In that period, 
" beginning at Jerusalem," the gospel was first deliberately 
spread in the surrounding area. Next, Samaria was 
systematically evangelised. But soon it was seen that the 
fire kindled at Pentecost was not to be confined to 
officially organised missions. The pilgrims who had heard 
St. Peter at that feast carried the astonishing news home 
with them and spread it among their own people, and it is 
not unlikely that Eome first heard of the gospel in this 
way. Then the scattering of the Jerusalem Church, owing 
to persecution by the Sanhedrin and afterwards by Herod 
Agrippa, sent its members abroad to carry the seed of the 
kingdom of heaven wherever they went, for in these 
early days of enthusiasm every Christian was called to be 
a missionary. An important step forward was taken when 
a Gentile Church originating in the irresponsible efforts of 
certain entirely unofficial Greek Christians was established 
at Antioch ; for this Church became the centre of Hellenic 
Christianity, while Jerusalem remained only the head- 
quarters of Jewish Christianity. It proved to be the most 
live Church of the ApostoHc Age. Its charities outflowed 
in gifts for the Christians at Jerusalem when they were 
suffering from a famine; and its missionary zeal was 



CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 15 

proved by its equipping the only definitely organised 
preaching expeditions to the heathen world in these early 
days of which we have any account. Thus in very 
ancient times this great Church came to the front, a 
position it maintained for centuries as the metropolis of 
Christianity in Syria. Chiefly owing to the work of St. 
Paul, who had been sent out by the Church at Antioch as 
a companion to Barnabas, at that time a more prominent 
person, the gospel soon reached Cyprus, the south and 
west of Asia Minor, Macedonia and Achaia, and even 
extended as far as Illyricum. After Jerusalem and 
Antioch — the two metropolitan centres — the chief Christian 
cities in the Apostolic Age were Ephesus, the capital of 
Asia ; Thessalonica, the capital of South Macedonia ; and 
Corinth, the capital of Achaia ; to which must be added 
the one great outpost of the Apostolic Church in the 
West, Eome itself, the seat of the empire. It is possible 
that a Church arose in this early period at Alexandria, 
the metropolis of Egypt, although but little weight can 
be attached to the legend that this Church was founded 
by St. Mark, since it does not appear in any extant 
writing of Clement or Origen, and is first met with in 
Eusebius, who only records it as a tradition.^ 

Nothing is more significant of the courage and con- 
fidence of the early Christian evangelists than the fact 
that from the first they seized on metropolitan centres for 
their missions. In St. Paul these characteristics led to a 
magnificent prolepsis. With an enthusiasm which would 
have been pretentious if it had not sprung from faith 
and afterwards found justification in fact, the apostle 
spoke largely of Eoman provinces — " Asia," " Macedonia," 
" Achaia " — as though they were already won, when he 
had done little more than plant his standard in their chief 
towns. For generations Christianity was a town religion. 
The intelligence, quickness, and energy of urban popula- 
tions responded more readily to the new appeal of the 
gospel than the slower and more conservative nature of the 

* ipaalv, etc., Hist. Eccl. ii. 16. 



16 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

country folk. Still there was a radiation from the town 
centres that affected the surrounding regions in various 
degrees. Thus in writing to the Corinthians St. Paul is 
able to include " all the saints which are in the whole of 
Achaia.^ No reliance can be placed on unauthenticated 
traditions of the labours of other apostles in various parts 
of the world 2 especially as the rivalry among the Churches 
led to an eager desire to claim apostolic origin — and 
consequent authority — wherever any pretence of the kind 
could be put forward. During the later decades of the 
first century the history of the Church is plunged into 
obscurity only partially illumined here and there by 
transient gleams. The Johannine writings throw some 
light on the district of Ephesus, and indicate that in their 
early days Hellenistic thought was already affecting the 
Churches of that part of Asia. The Epistle of Clement 
(a.d. 95) shows us the Church at Corinth, factious as in 
the days of St. Paul, rebuked by her sister Church at Eome 
for unchristian envy and for lack of the grace of love in 
dismissing her elders. If the Didach6 may be assigned to 
so early a period, we have in this little Church Manual a 
vivid picture of the life of a small community of Gentile 
Christians, probably in Syria, severely antagonistic to the 
Jews, and kept in touch with other Churches by the visits 
of travelling Christians known as "apostles" and 
" prophets." 

The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (A.D. 70) 
and the consequent ruin of the Jewish State and power 
had a mixed effect on the condition of the Christians. 
On the one hand, it freed them from the persecution of 
their worst enemies ; on the other hand, it revealed to the 
world the distinction between Christianity and Judaism. 

1 2 Cor. i. 1. 

' Matthew in Ethiopia ; Andrew in Asia Minor, Thrace, Macedonia, and 
Greece ; Philip in the same wide region, with the addition of Scythia and 
even Gaul ; Matthias in Ethiopia ; Simon the Zealot in Egypt, Lybia, and 
Mauritania ; Thaddseus preaching the gospel in the African language ; 
Thomas in Parthia and India. There is much confusion and contradiction 
among the legends. 



CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 17 



The Christians had taken no part in the revolt ; on the eve 
of the siege they had withdrawn to Pella. In early times 
they had been treated favourably by the ofiicials of the 
imperial Government. St. Luke takes great pains to make 
this clear, and his testimony is supported by St. Paul, who 
always writes respectfully of the law and authority of 
Eome. Nero's savage massacre of Christians at Eome 
does not indicate any widespread persecution, although the 
new attitude of bitter antagonism to the imperial Govern- 
ment taken by the Apocalypse — so completely the reverse of 
that maintained by earlier New Testament books — may be 
traced to the shock produced by that frightful outrage 
among the Churches of the East.^ Professor Eamsay 
considers that the attitude of Eome towards the Christians 
was changed by the Emperor Vespasian.^ But if so it is 
very remarkable that no tradition to that effect has been 
preserved by the ecclesiastical writers. In point of fact, 
Christianity was always illegal, until it was adopted by 
Constantine, although it enjoyed periods of comparative 
immunity from persecution and was favoured by one or two 
direct acts of indulgence.^ During all this time it was 
not a " licensed religion " as was the case with Judaism, 
and it was never lawful to propagate a religion without 
special licence. Judaism being licensed — at all events for 
Jews — Christianity was not molested so long as it was 
regarded as only a phase of the recognised religion of the 
Jews; but after a.d. 70, when the two faiths stood apart 
in the full light of day, this confusion with its consequent 
protection of the Church was no longer possible. 

It is true that Eome showed a large-minded, practical 
tolerance in leaving to its conquered provinces the enjoy- 
ment of their own religions. As far as any religious faith 
remained with the officials, they would think it as well not 
to offend the indigenous divinities, and the Eoman genius 
for government avoided needless irritation. But this did 

^ Especially if " the number of the beast " represents Nero. 

* The Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 256 ff. 

• By Gallienus, and again by Galerius. 

a 



18 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



not allow of the propagation of foreign religions in different 
parts of the empire.^ No doubt such religions were spread 
in wild confusion ; but for the most part they were 
content to exist side by side, without molesting one 
another, like the various species of birds that live together 
in a wood. They even went farther than this : they 
adopted one another's rites and legends, welded together, 
united in a syncretic amalgam. Such a process could be 
encouraged as helping towards the unification of the 
empire. But Christianity was of a very different temper. 
Enthusiastically missionary, pushing, and aggressive, it was 
intolerant of any other faith, since it claimed to be the one 
absolute faith of the one true God, and regarded all other 
religions as false and wicked and their divinities as demons 
to be denounced and cast out. For this reason the 
Christians were very unpopular. Some of them did not 
hesitate to pour scorn and contempt on the superstition of 
their neighbours to an extent that was not only insulting, 
but, as sincere pagans believed, even dangerous ; and 
earthquakes and pestilences were attributed to the anger 
of the gods at the " atheism " of the Christians. Con- 
sequently, it was common for a great natural calamity to 
be followed by an outbreak against the Christians who 
were supposed to have provoked it. Thus they fre- 
quently suffered from the persecution of panics. Then their 
refusal to share in the public games while they declaimed 
against the lewdness of the theatre and the bloodthirsty 
cruelty of the amphitheatre, their reluctance to join in 
popular holidays or to accept municipal offices which 
involved pagan sacrificial rites, and their reiterated pre- 
diction of the coming judgment and approaching end of the 
world by fire, resulted in their being regarded as " enemies 
of the human race." We can well understand how a 
Government that was nervously anxious to prevent disorder 
in its vast and incongruous dominions would be averse to 
the spread of a sect whose presence provoked antagonism 
and introduced a disintegrating element into society. 

^ The rule to be oLiseiveJ was, Cujus regio, ejus religio. 



CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 19 

Above all, the new, monstrous cult of the emperor, which 
was supposed to carry with it the worship of the incarnate 
genius of Kome, was peculiarly obnoxious to the Christians, 
whose outspoken repudiation of it laid them open to a 
charge of treason, to the terrible accusation of Icesm 
majestatis. For these reasons they were always liable to 
persecution. 

The attack assumed various forms. Sometimes it was 
a mere rising of a fanatical mob, though, as in the Turkish 
dominions to-day, there might be good reason for supposing 
that this was winked at or even instigated by the 
authorities ; sometimes it was a case of prosecution by a 
private individual, before a magistrate who may have been 
reluctant to put the law in force and anxious to find an 
excuse for acquitting his prisoner ; sometimes it was 
directly ordered by the emperor. It was only in the 
latter — a much more rare — case that a serious, widespread 
persecution took place. There is no evidence that any such 
persecution, as a deliberate act of State policy, was ex- 
perienced under Vespasian or Titus, or that those emperors 
had any idea whatever of eradicating the then obscure 
sect of the Christians. Domitian (a.d. 81-96) does 
appear to have cast his suspicious eye on these dangerous 
innovators, and probably his execution of persons of high 
position for " atheism " and for turning aside to " customs 
of the Jews" was an attack upon Christians. But the 
known instances are few. Irenseus's statement that St. John 
was banished to Patmos in the reign of Domitian ^ is an 
indication that there was then some persecution in the East ; 
but, as we have seen, sporadic persecution was always 
possible, and probably it never entirely ceased during 
these times. There is no sign of an extensive general 
persecution under Domitian. 

When we come to the second century, the history of 
the Early Church begins to emerge out of obscurity in two 
quarters of great interest, during the reign of Trajan (a.d. 
98-117). First we have Pliny's correspondence with the 
* Adv. Har. V. 30. 



20 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



emperor, from which we learn that in Bithynia the temples 
were almost forsaken, that there was no sale for sacrificial 
victims, and that the Christians were in a majority of the 
population. Phny as proconsul had prosecuted inquiries 
into this serious condition of his province, putting two 
deaconesses to the torture, to extract from them the 
secrets of the sect ; but he could ascertain nothing against 
them. Still, he regarded Christianity as a " depraved and 
immoderate superstition," and he had condemned many of 
its adherents to death. Being a humane man and not self- 
reliant, Pliny was perplexed at the problem that faced him. 
He shrank from the drastic measures that would be 
involved in the attempt to stem the popular movement ; ^ 
yet this movement was illegal. In fact, it was now 
doubly obnoxious to the law, because Trajan had recently 
issued a rescript forbidding the existence of secret societies, 
and the churches appeared to be such societies. Ultimately 
this difficulty was got over by the enrolment of them as 
burial societies, since an exception was made in favoui^ of those 
serviceable clubs. Trajan's brief, decisive answer to Pliny's 
inquiry as to how he should treat the Christians is highly 
significant.^ There is to be no police hunt for these 
people, and informers are not to be encouraged. But when 
Christians are actually prosecuted they must be punished. 
We can have no question as to what that means; the 
penalty is death. Dr. Lightfoot regarded this as a 
merciful rescript ; and no doubt it was merciful in intention. 
Nevertheless, now for the first time — as far as we are 
aware — Christianity as such is declared to be a capital 
crime. Previously it was this constructively ; henceforth 
it is to be so explicitly, on the authority of the emperor. 

The second case in which we have a gleam of light 
thrown on the state of the Church in the reign of Trajan 
is that of the seven Ignatian letters now widely accepted 
in their shorter Greek form.^ Ignatius, the bishop of 

1 Pliny, Epis. x. 96. ^ pHny, Eiris. x. 97. 

' Their genuineness is vindicated by Zabn and Lightfoot and admitted 
by Harnack, Kruger, etc. 



CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 21 

Antioch, is taken to Eome during this reign to be killed 
by wild beasts in the Coliseum. 

Hadrian (a.d. 117-138), the "grand monarch "who 
made it his pride to beautify the cities of his empire with 
magnificent buildings while he lived in splendour and 
luxury, had none of the rigour of the stern soldier Trajan, 
and he does not appear to have taken any part himself in 
the persecution of Christians. Yet there were instances of 
martyrdom even under his easy rule ; and the insurrection 
of the Jews stirred up by Bar Cochbar (a.d. 131) led to 
great slaughter of Christians wherever their old enemies 
got the upper hand of the Eoman Government. This 
demolished the last remnant of confusion between Chris- 
tianity and Judaism in the official mind. 

Formerly it was customary to regard the reign of the 
just, conscientious emperor Antoninus Pius (a.d. 138—161) 
as free from the stain of persecution ; but that agreeable 
delusion had to be abandoned a few years ago, when the 
date of the martyrdom of Polycarp, the aged bishop of 
Smyrna and teacher of Ignatius, was ascertained to fall 
within this reign (a.d. 155 or 156). Still, it was a local 
affair, largely instigated by Jewish animosity, with which 
the emperor was not directly concerned. His successor, 
the gentle Marcus Aurelius, saint and philosopher (a.d. 
161—180), must be held responsible for the savage per- 
secution of the Christians at Lyons and Vienne — so 
graphically described in the letter from those Churches to 
their brethren in Asia Minor — since he had been consulted 
by the local authorities.^ His own reference to the 
Christians shows that he regarded them as obstinate, self- 
advertising fanatics whose folly was a menace to public 
order. Marcus Aurelius went beyond Trajan both in 
directly instigating persecution and in reviving the odious 
practice of employing informers. According to Melito of 
Sardis, the persecution spread to Asia Minor,^ and from 
Athenagoras we should conclude that it extended over a 
wide area.^ This is the period of the early apologists, 

1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 1. ^ ij^^^^ 3 j^^^i^ 2. 



22 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

Quadra tus and Aiistides writing in the reign of Hadrian, 
Justin Martyr and Athenagoras in the days of the 
Antonines. The calm, courageous dignity of the defence 
of Christianity now offered to the Government by men who 
put it forth at the risk of torture and death, is as striking 
as its intellectual vigour and rare moral enthusiasm. It 
never descends to cringing excuses, cowardly subterfuges, 
or angry retorts, although it is always prepared to drive 
the war of argument into the enemy's territory. Calm, 
open, frank, respectful, it reveals its authors as men who 
are certain that they can justify their position and con- 
fident of the future triumph of their cause, while they 
are quite ready to shed their own blood in the athletics of 
martyrdom. 

Nowhere is the irony of history more manifest than in 
the fact that when the two best of the Eoman emperors, 
Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, were followed by 
one of the most worthless in the person of Commodus 
(a.d. 180—192), persecution was arrested and a season of 
prosperity hitherto unparalleled set in for the Christians. 
This idle, dissolute young man had not sufficient serious- 
ness of purpose to persecute, and he seems to have taken 
a stupid pleasure in reversing his father's policy. At the 
same time, Marcia, his favourite mistress, was distinctly 
friendly to the Christians, among whom she appears to 
have been brought up in her humbler days ; in particular 
she exerted herself to have the exiles recalled from Sicily. 
Now for the first time Christians were to be seen and 
recognised as such in the imperial court. 

At this point the second period of activity and growth 
in the Church begins. With the exception of one short 
interval of persecution a long summer of prosperity had 
now set in. Commodus was succeeded by Septimius 
Severus (a.d. 193-211), a good emperor reigning well, 
and therefore a persecutor of the Christians. But his 
antagonism to the growing Church appears to have been 
provoked by the extravagances of those Puritans of the 
second century, the Montanists. There are two sides to 



CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 23 

this matter. The Montanists perceived that with growth 
in numbers, wealth, and general prosperity, the Church 
was losing its early purity and the fine, heroic enthusiasm 
of simpler times. They not only practised a new rigour of 
discipline within the Church ; they also showed themselves 
eager to grasp the martyr's crown by provoking the 
antagonism of the authorities. Now, Septimius Severus 
while on progress in the East had come under the influence 
of the priests of Isis and Serapis, among the most bitter 
of the antagonists of the Christians. It is not surprising, 
therefore, that under these circumstances he issued a decree 
forbidding the propagation of new doctrines or any change 
of religions (a.d. 203), a rather inconsistent thing to do 
considering that he himself had just been initiated into 
the Egyptian mysteries. But the decree was simply aimed 
at the Christians, who were the chief, if not the sole, 
sufferers from it. The consequent persecution extended 
along North Africa and was felt severely in Egypt, where 
Leonidas, the father of Origen, was the first to seal his 
faith with his blood. Here too was the scene of the 
romance of Potameia, the beautiful, gifted girl who won 
over her military custodian Basilides to follow her in 
martyrdom. After this we come to forty years of peace, 
not indeed without occasional local outbreaks of persecu- 
tion — for Christianity was illegal all this time — but with 
no serious attempt to suppress the growing Church, which 
is now seen standing out in broad daylight and challenging 
the world's attention. One emperor, Alexander Severus, 
has a statue of Christ set up in his palace by the side of 
statues of Abraham and Orpheus ; another, Philip the 
Arabian, is even rumoured to have been a Christian,^ 
though his celebration of the secular games contradicts 
that notion. 

Thus all seemed favourable, and the Church, growing 
strong and rich, might consider that since she had 
weathered the storms of her early days she could now 
look forward to a course of unimpeded progress, till the 

^ Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 34. 



24 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



whole empire was won for the dominion of Christ, when 
there fell upon her a violent persecution, in com- 
parison with which all previous attacks were slight and 
local. This was the great Decian persecution (a.d. 250). 
The emperor Decius, coming to the throne of what 
appeared to be a decaying empire, determined to make 
a supreme effort to restore the old Eoman virtue and 
vigour. In particular he regarded the Christians as the 
most dangerous innovators of the ancient customs. 
Accordingly he entered on the huge task of putting an 
end to Christianity. The persecution which followed 
was a life-and-death struggle. It mainly differed from 
previous persecutions in being carried on by a strong, 
determined man in pursuance of a deliberate policy to 
root out what its author believed to be the most serious 
menace to the State, an imperium in imperio, the growth 
of which threatened to choke the civil power. Thus 
instigated by Decius himself, this tremendous onslaught 
on the Church — incomparably more searching and uncom- 
promising than anything that preceded it — was the first 
really general persecution, the first attempt of Eome to 
use all its might for the utter extirpation of Christianity. 
And it failed. The Church proved too strong for the State. 
When Decius perished miserably in a morass during a 
war with the Goths, the persecution flickered out and 
faded away. Gallus revived it faintly and Valerian more 
seriously, until his capture by the Persians was promptly 
followed by his son Gallienus's issue of the first edict of 
toleration (a.d. 260). There had been hosts of martyrs ; 
but multitudes of weaker men and women had been 
terrified into apostasy, and the Church was now face 
to face with the grave problem of " the lapsed," a 
problem that led to a serious division. Still, the fiery 
ordeal had been a great purgation, and now again the 
Christians enjoyed a long spell of liberty, with ample 
opportunities for pushing their conquests forward in 
this third season of vigorous life and missionary energy. 
It would seem that this time the victory was secure. 



CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS 25 



But once again the forces of the enemy were marshalled 
for a last decisive conflict. After more than forty years 
of peace and prosperity the most severe of all the 
persecutions was commenced. Christianity was now a 
popularly recognised religion ; in the cities large 
and imposing churches were among the chief public 
buildings ; many Christians were to be found in high places 
at court ; and the emperor Diocletian was favourably 
disposed to them. Although the persecution bears his 
name, and although as senior Augustus he was actually 
responsible for it and was even induced to sign the earlier 
edicts, its real author was his colleague Galerius, whom 
Lactantius calls the " Wild Beast " ; and the final edict com- 
manding all Christians to sacrifice or die was issued by 
another colleague, Maximian, when the old emperor was laid 
aside in broken health and in a state of melancholy border- 
ing on insanity. Eusebius gives us a vivid account of the 
martyrs of Palestine under this last desperate attempt to 
stamp out Christianity.^ But if the Decian persecution with 
all the resources of the State to support it had failed half 
a century before, the idea of destroying Christianity now 
that it had grown so much stronger was preposterous. 
All this bloodslied was so much waste as far as the 
aims of the persecutors were concerned. In the agonies 
of his deathbed, its author Galerius issued an edict putting 
a stop to it and even commanding the Christians to pray 
for him (a.d. 311). After this it is not so very won- 
derful that two years later Constantine went over to 
the winning side and openly adopted Christianity ; for 
he was an astute ruler who had seen the outbreak of the 
persecution from Diocletian's court and observed its utter 
futility. 

It is not easy to estimate the position attained by the 
victorious Church in the East after these centuries of 
chequered history, but a rough idea may be formed from 
the data afforded us by history. Professor Harnack points 
to Asia Minor as " the Christian country kut €^o'^7jv 

^ Be Martyribus Paloestinoe — following book viii. of Hist. Eccl. 



26 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



during the pre- Cons tantine era." ^ Half Nicomedia was 
now Christian ; Bithynia and Western Pisidia were widely 
Christianised ; in Asia and Caria the Christians were very 
numerous ; the southern provinces of Syria, Pamphilia, and 
Isauria sent twenty-five bishops to the Nicene Council and 
Cilicia sent nine. Thrace, Macedonia, Dardania, Epirus, 
and Greece were all provinces of the Church with their 
own metropolitans, though little is known of their history. 
Korth and west there were young churches planted as far 
away as the banks of the Danube, and missionary work 
was already begun among the Goths to the north-west 
of the Black Sea. 

In Palestine there was quite a number of churches — 
Professor Harnack gives the names of about thirty — with 
Jerusalem as their capital. There were three churches in 
Phoenicia and a good number in Coele-Syria, with the 
important bishopric of Antioch at their head. Less than 
a century after this time Chrysosotom reckons the number 
of members of the chief church — perhaps, as Gibbon con- 
sidered, meaning the total Christian population of this city 
— to be 100,000. Then there were churches in Arabia, 
and as early as the time of Origen numerous bishoprics in 
towns south of the Hauran. In Egypt the Christians 
were very numerous, those in Alexandria far out- 
numbering the Jews ; churches were flourishing in the 
Nile towns as far up as Philse and on the two oases. 
Lastly, Edessa was now an important Christian centre, and 
there were several churches in Mesopotamia, and some 
even beyond the confines of the empire in Parthia and 
Persia. 

^ Expansion of Christianity, Eng. Trans,, vol. ii. p. 326. 



CHAPTER II 



CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 
BORN PROBABLY A.D. 274 ; DIED A.D. 337 

(a) Pagan historians : Eutropius ; Aurelius Victor ; Zosimus. 
Christian writers : Lactantius ; Eusebius ; Socrates ; Sozomen. 

(&) De Broglie, VEglise et VEm'pire au IV^ Siecle, vol. i., 1856; 
Stanley, ^Jas^ern Church,l8Ql; Smithes Dictionary of Biography, 
article " Constantinus I." ; Frith, Constantine the Great, 1905- 

The name of Constantine marks the commencement of a 
new era of history both in the empire and in the Church. 
The transition from the old form of government which was 
nominally republican, with the emperor as prince of the 
Senate, commander-in-chief of the army, Pontifex Maximus, 
and much else, accumulating in his own person the chief 
republican offices, to the new form of government which 
was frankly despotic, must be attributed to Diocletian. It 
was that keen-sighted ruler who saw that the time had 
come for the abolition of empty formulae and a readjust- 
ment of the whole machinery of government. Diocletian 
abandoned all pretence of maintaining the stern Eoman 
simplicity of manners, and introduced into his palace the 
pomp and ceremony of an Oriental court. By centralising 
the government, and then subdividing it, so that there -were 
two Augusti — an Eastern and a Western — and two Caesars 
under them, he so knit up the imperial authority that when 
the senior Augustus died the junior Augustus took the first 
place as a matter of course, and one of the Caesars became 
junior Augustus. Each Augustus nominated his own 
Caesar. All decrees affecting the whole empire were 
signed by the joint rulers, the supreme authority resting 

27 



28 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

with the senior Augustus. In this way three advantages 
were gained : the vast work of government was subdivided ; 
the unity of empire was preserved ; and the succession 
was regulated, in a peaceful and orderly method. Then, 
by settling his court at Nicomedia, Diocletian already 
began to transfer the centre of gravity in the empire from 
Eome to the East. Constantine came to the throne under 
this arrangement. His father was Constantius Chlorus, of 
a noble Dardanian family, who had been Caesar over the 
provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and then Augustus. 
His mother was the famous Empress Helena, whose 
traditional " Invention of the Cross " has made her a 
conspicuous figure in Christian art. By a confusion of 
traditions she has been taken for a British princess of the 
same name ; but she was really a Cihcian and servant at 
an inn. Helena has been described as a " concubine " of 
Constantius; but she must not be regarded as only the 
emperor's mistress. There can be no doubt that they 
were husband and wife according to a secondary order 
of marriage recognised in the empire at the time. 

The young Constantine was brought up at his mother's 
village home till he was sixteen years old, when the 
suspicious Diocletian had him come to reside at court in 
Nicomedia, evidently as a hostage for his father's good 
conduct. When Constantius became Augustus he sent for 
his son to help him with the government (a.d. 305). 
Though outwardly consenting, Galerius, who was senior 
Augustus at the time, was really unwilling to let him go, 
and Constantine had to slip away secretly and hurry 
Westwards to escape recapture. The next year (a.d. 306) 
Constantius died at York, having nominated his son as 
his successor ; and at York Constantine was hailed by the 
soldiers as Augustus. When he had obtained supreme 
power, Constantine, like Diocletian, made the centre of 
his government in the East. For a time Nicomedia, not 
Eome, was the real capital of the empire. Then Constantine 
determined to found a new Eome. With the insight of 
genius he chose Byzantium as the site, and built there the 



CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 



29 



city which as Constantinople has ever after commemorated 
its famous founder. Magnificently situated on the Bosphorus 
by the high road between Europe and Asia, this city was 
naturally the key to the gates of empire in both directions. 
It was in Europe, not in Asia, as was the case with 
Nicomedia. We may regard that fact as not without 
significance, Diocletian, though so alive to the exigencies 
of the times, looked Eastward and emulated the Oriental 
despots in his court methods. But although his mother 
was an Asiatic and although he himself had spent his youth 
in Asia, Constantine was in sympathy with Greek culture, 
and Constantinople was a Greek city. From the first and 
throughout its history till its capture by the Turks, the 
new city was a centre of Hellenic life and influence. The 
significance of this fact can hardly be overestimated. 
The Eoman empire in the East was fast degenerating into 
an Asiatic despotism after the Persian type. Constantine 
saved it from that fate. Nevertheless he accentuated the 
most significant line of policy pursued by Diocletian ; 
while preserving the European character of the govern- 
ment, he recognised that the centre of gravity must be in 
the East and acted accordingly. The consequences were 
as momentous to the Church as to the empire. Eemoval 
from Eome was escape from Eoman pagan traditions and 
Eoman aristocratic influences. It was the death-blow to 
the last Hngering influence of the Senate. Henceforth the 
empire, except in one vital element, was Eoman only in 
name. It was no longer the rule of a city over its 
conquered provinces ; it was the rule of a prince and his 
colleagues, who might be of any nationality. The one vital 
element which preserved the integrity of the empire 
throughout and perpetuated it in the Byzantine rulers 
was Eoman law. Like " the kingdom of God," this vast 
civilising influence came " without observation." Having its 
foundations in old civic usages of republican times, and 
built up by jurists quite unknown to fame from the time 
of Marcus Aurelius onwards, it was destined to become 
the basis of the jurisprudence and public ethics of 



30 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



mediaeval and modern Europe. Eoman law stands only 
second to Christianity as a moulding influence of European 
civilisation. This system was so firmly established by 
the time of the transference of the chief seat of govern- 
ment to the East, that the world was saved from what 
might have been total ruin, from the submerging of the 
stern Eoman sense of justice and the swamping of per- 
sonal as well as public right beneath a flood of Oriental 
customs. 

The founding of Constantinople profoundly affected both 
the Western and the Eastern branches of the Catholic 
Church, but in very different ways. To the West it 
brought ecclesiastical liberty, and it made the papacy 
possible. Now, while the papacy became a tyranny within 
the Church, it secured a measure of freedom from the 
tyranny of the imperial Government over the Church. At 
Eome the pope soon assumed a position which would have 
been impossible to him if the emperor had been residing 
there. While other cities — Treves, Milan, Eavenna — subse- 
quently became centres for the empire in the West, Eome was 
left severely alone, with the consequence that the pope was 
the first citizen and even came to take the place of the 
emperor as the chief centre of power and influence in the city. 
It would be grossly unfair to attribute the enormous power 
that has accreted to the papacy to nothing but the rapacity 
of popes. At more than one crisis of European peril the pope 
proved to be the saviour of society. When the arm of 
the empire was paralysed, the power of the Church came 
to the rescue of civilisation, in face of barbarian invasions. 
Leo I. was able to protect Italy as effectually as though 
he had been a powerful prince, although his only weapons 
were persuasion and diplomacy. Gregory the Great was a 
potent influence for the saving of civilisation in the Old 
World, as well as for the missionary work of the Church 
among the new rising races of the West. Hildebrand may 
be regarded in the light of a champion of the spiritual power 
in opposition to the brute force of mediaeval tyranny. 
The Middle Ages saw the long duel between the popes and 



CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 



31 



the emperors, and on the whole the popes were on the side 
of religion, culture, and progress. It was otherwise when 
the Kenaissance and the Eeformation were followed by the 
counter-Eeformation. Then all the forces of obscurantism 
and despotism ranged themselves with the papacy, while 
the new light, life, and liberty were driven out to fresh 
fields. 

How different was it in the East, where the Church 
was subservient to the State throughout all these ages ! 
No doubt we must attribute the contrast between the 
histories of Eastern and Western Europe in part to racial 
distinctions. In some respects the former is more allied 
to Asia than to Europe. Thus we are able to trace the 
history of aU the Eastern Churches in a common conspectus. 
But while this is the case it must be seen that Constantino's 
political move in finally and effectually transferring the 
centre of government from the banks of the Tiber to the 
shores of the Bosphorus immensely aggravated the tendency 
of the civil despotism to crush out the liberties of the 
Church. The Eastern Church, from the days of Constantine 
onwards, lived under the shadow of an imperial palace. 
That we may take to be an epitome of its history ; and the 
ominous fact is directly traceable to the founding of New 
Eome by Constantine. 

But while this is obvious to us to-day, and is the most 
significant phenomenon in the appearance of Constantine 
on the stage of history when viewed in the broad light of 
the ages, it was another department of the famous emperor's 
action that arrested the attention of contemporaries. The 
man who really inaugurated the Eastern Church's 
paralysing bondage to the State was hailed by the 
Christians of his day as their emancipator, friend, and 
patron, and panegyrists loaded his name with fulsome 
praises for his services to Christianity. 

The story of the conversion of Constantine belongs to 
the romance of history ; but, like many another romantic 
tale which has been made to pass through the fires of 
criticism, it has not come out scathless. The adulation of 



32 THE GREEK AND EASTERN" CHURCHES 



a panegyrist, the natural thirst for marvels, and the con- 
vention of medipeval art have combined to set the scene of 
Constantine's vision on the road to Home side by side with 
St. Paul's vision during his journey to Damascus. When 
viewed in the sober light of history, neither this event, 
whatever it may have been, nor its consequences, is in any 
way comparable to that stupendous crisis and turning-point 
in the career of the great apostle. Newman argued 
strenuously for the belief that here was a real miracle, a 
direct supernatural intervention by God, at a fitting time. 
But when we consider the fact that it was a war banner 
that the Prince of Peace was said to have inspired, and 
when we go on to look at the subsequent character of the 
man who is said to have been thus favoured and the whole 
effect of the patronage of Christianity by the empire, it is 
not easy to believe that all this indicates nothing less than 
the finger of God. When, however, we come down to the 
lower plane of simple history, it must be admitted that 
something strange did happen, and that this occurrence, 
whatever it was, became the occasion of stupendous con- 
sequences. The accounts vary ; but that is no more than 
must be said of all independent reports of the same event. 
What is plain is that, in October 312, while Constantine 
was marching to Eome against the usurper Maxentius, the 
champion of paganism, something occurred to lead him to 
claim the Christian symbol for his standard in the 
approaching battle. Whether we accept the narrative 
which Eusebius says the emperor gave him on oath^ — 
perhaps not to us the more reliable for that fact — that the 
emperor " saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of 
light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the in- 
scription, " Conquer by this," ^ and received an explanation 
from Christ in a dream ; or stretch our credulity to the 

^ Vit. Const, i. 27. On this point Prof, E. C. Richardson acutely remarks : 
"Note here the care Eusebius takes to throw off the responsibility for the 
marvellous " {Nicene and Post- Mcene Fathers, vol. i. p. 490). In his History 
Eusebius' statement is both vague and cautious {Hist. Eccl. ix. 9). 

' TOiiry vLko.. 



CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 



33 



still more marvellous and much later account of Sozomen, 
according to which angels appeared at the time of the vision 
and gave the explanation there and then ; or fall back on the 
sober statement of Lactantius, whose report is the earliest of 
all, and who resolves the whole occurrence into a dream ^ — 
whichever of these narratives we accept, or whether we 
attempt to combine any of the elements contained in them, 
we cannot well escape from the conclusion that something 
happened to bring Constantine to a definite decision at 
this great crisis of his life. Possibly there was some 
curious effect of sunlight — such as that known to 
astronomers as the " parhelion," in which a cross of light 
may be seen radiating from the sun, which the emperor's 
mood at the time could not but lead him to welcome as a 
sign from heaven. That is the point. The fascination for 
a supposed physical miracle has diverted attention from 
a most interesting psychological process. Unlike St. Paul, 
Constantine had never been opposed to Christianity. He 
had inherited from his father a friendly feeling towards 
the Christians. Eusebius prefaces his report of what 
the emperor had said to him about the vision with a de- 
scription of Constantino's perplexity and his prayer for 
light at a moment of terrible anxiety. None of the 
narratives will allow us to assign his adoption of 
Christianity to mere statecraft or cunning policy. 

When the battle at the Milvian Bridge in which the 
tyrant Maxentius was killed gave Constantine a magnificent 
victory, he felt in this a confirmation of his resolve to 
accept the Christian faith and adopt its sign. It is plain 
that he threw in his lot with the Church on conviction. 
How deep that conviction went it is not easy to say. 
His subsequent syncretism and his vague treatment of 
the essentials of Christian truth forbid us to believe that 
he had any definite intellectual grip of the subject. 
Still, he honestly accepted Christ as a Divine Lord, and 
he consistently leaned to the side of the Christians in 
their differences with the pagans. It scarcely lies within 

^ De Morte Pers. 44. 

3 



34 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the province of history to penetrate still deeper into 
the inquiry as to whether the so-called conversion of 
Constantino brought with it a real change of character. 
He was large-minded, generous, pacific before this ; and he 
remained so afterwards. Yet he cannot be acquitted of 
charges of savage outbursts of cruelty even after his " con- 
version." Possibly he was not guilty of the murder of his 
wife Fausta, but he could not plead innocence with re- 
gard to that of his son Crispus. Eeasons of State have 
been urged in defence of his action in this matter ; 
evidently it was a political murder. Still, the guilt of 
blood and that the blood of his own child lies on 
Constantino in the Christian period of his life. In other 
respects he was an honourable and upright man, and a 
faithful husband, free from all accusations of impurity 
among the great temptations of an Oriental court. 

Most men act from mixed motives, and certainly we 
could not credit Constantino with the single eye of a 
George Washington or a John Bright. There were high 
reasons of State to encourage so astute a master of the art 
of government to follow up his undoubted sympathy 
with Christianity and more or less solid convictions of its 
truth with vigorous practical patronage. He was far- 
seeing enough to perceive that it was the winning side in 
the conflict of princes and parties. He had been a hostage 
at Nicomedia when the Diocletian persecution had broken 
out ; he had witnessed the mad fanaticism of Galerius 
which had failed to subdue the calm courage of the 
Christians ; Maxentius the usurper, and later Licinius, his 
partner, but also his rival, had enUsted their forces in 
favour of paganism. Manifestly it was to the interest of 
Constantino to have the powerful, growing influence of 
Christianity thrown into the scale in his favour. It is 
highly to the credit of his discernment that he perceived 
how futile the long intermittent conflict of the empire 
with the Church had been, and saw that the time had come, 
not merely to make peace, as even Galerius and still earlier 
Gallienus had seen, but to accept the situation frankly and 



CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 



35 



turn it to the best account. We may admit the genuine- 
ness of Constantine's conviction of the truth of Christianity 
and the honesty of his decision to adhere to it, and still go 
a long way with Seeley when he asserts, concerning 
Constantine's adoption of Christianity, that " by so doing he 
may be said to have purchased an indefeasible title by a 
charter. He gave certain liberties and he received in 
turn passive obedience. He gained a sanction for the 
Oriental theory of government ; in return he accepted the 
law of the Church. He became irresponsible to his sub- 
jects on condition of becoming responsible to Christ." 

It is necessary to consider this position and come to 
some clear understanding of it, because we are here at the 
source and fountain of the political history of the Greek 
Church. What that Church became, not only in relation 
to the State, but also in its own life and character, was 
largely determined by the action of Constantine in 
patronising Christianity and the conduct of the Church 
in accepting his patronage. At this point we may say 
the die was cast, the Eubicon was crossed, the fate of 
Christendom — or rather of Eastern Christendom, for the 
West soon shook itself free — was sealed. It is desirable, 
therefore, to trace out carefully the stages of Constantine's 
treatment of the Church till we reach the final issue which 
was to stamp the ecclesiastical policy of the empire for 
all succeeding ages. These may be regarded as four, 
characterised respectively by sympathy, justice, patronage, 
and control. 

In the first stage Constantine feels drawn to Chris- 
tianity and adopts the Christian symbol ; in the second he 
grants religious liberty for the benefit of the Christians ; 
in the third he bestows on the Church privileges, im- 
munities, and funds from the State purse ; in the fourth 
he interferes with ecclesiastical affairs, tyrannises over 
bishops and congregations and forces them to his will. 

Constantine's first public confession of Christianity con- 
sisted in his adoption of the Labarum as his standard in 
battle. This symbol consisted of a spear with a cross- 



36 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



piece near the point, a gold wreath containing the initials 
of Jesus Christ (I and X) as an anagram (^) mounted 
above and a banner hanging below the cross-piece. After 
his victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, 
Constantino was welcomed by the citizens of Eome as 
their deliverer from an odious tyranny, and by none 
more warmly than the Christians. The emperor justified 
their enthusiastic support by having a statue of himself 
with a cross in his hand erected in the most frequented 
part of the city. An inscription ascribed his victory to 
" this salutary sign." Constantino now showed favour to 
the Chri ins at every opportunity, and no persecution 
of Christianity was possible under his government. 

It would appear from a phrase in the edict of Milan 
that at an early date Constantino had issued rescripts to 
his officials favourable to the Christians. But the legal 
pronouncement which granted them complete religious 
liberty followed a meeting of Constantino with Licinius at 
Milan on the 13 th of June a.d. 314. This Magna Charta 
of religious liberty is one of the most significant documents 
in all history. It grants absolute freedom in religion, 
though it mentions Christians as especially needing the 
boon, declaring that " the Christians and all others should 
have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each 
of them appeared best." It applies to the whole empire — 
to all races, all creeds, all cults. There is no restriction 
of the heathen in favour of the Christians. Further, it 
permits people to change their religion, allowing them to 
adopt Christianity or any other religion. Lastly, it orders 
the confiscated property of the Christians to be restored, 
" and that without hesitation or controversy " ; there are 
to be no lawyers' quibbles witli this delicate question of 
property. Compensation to the present holders of Church 
buildings may be paid out of the imperial treasury.^ 

Here is the ideal of religious liberty, though not 
Cavour's " Free Church in a Free State " ; for until the 

1 Lactantius, De Morte Pers. 48, for the Latin form of the edict ; 
Eusebius, Sist. Eccl. x. 5, for a Greek version of it. 



CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 



37 



State is free it is difficult for the Church to escape from 
the interference of the Government even when the despotic 
ruler starts with the honest intention of respecting its 
liberties. Nevertheless the conception of the edict of 
Milan is magnificent in the breadth of its liberalism. As 
we read it we feel that the author of such a document 
must be classed with those rare minds that are centuries 
in advance of their age, and have the genius to adumbrate 
brilliant ideas the real scope of which is quite beyond 
their actual principles. Except for a very brief interval, 
the large conception of the edict of Milan was not 
realised even in the West before the Eeformation, and 
indeed not then except by a few obscure separatists such 
as the Baptists, the early Independents and Pilgrim 
Fathers, and a century later the Quakers. We must 
come down to the Dutchman William ill. for a sovereign 
who really practised what Con stan tine so boldly sketched 
out in the famous edict nearly fourteen hundred years 
before. Meanwhile this idea has never been realised in 
the Eastern Churches. 

In point of fact this law of religious liberty was an 
imperial permit, emanating from the good pleasure of 
Constantine. It was only the law of the empire because 
it was the will of the emperor. Thus from the first it 
rested on a very precarious basis. The world was not 
only not ripe for complete religious liberty ; no party in 
State or Church was really prepared to concede it to an 
opponent. We can scarcely look in the fourth century 
for what the greater part of Christendom is not yet within 
measurable distance of obtaining or even desiring. 
Accordingly we must not be at all surprised to see that 
from licensing all religions — and so liberating Christianity 
from penal restrictions — Constantine quickly proceeds to 
patronising the religion he has publicly adopted, nor that 
the leaders of the Church gratefully accept his favours, 
quite blind to the fact that they are thereby selling their 
liberties, deliberately walking into a cage. 

Constantine's favours took two forms. Eirst, he 



38 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



exempted the clergy from the obligation of filling 
municipal offices — a costly, burdensome obligation. This 
was already enjoyed by the pagan priesthood, so that in 
granting the privilege to the Christian clergy Constantine 
was only putting them on a level with the priests in the 
old temples. Similarly, when in England Nonconformist 
ministers share with Established Church clergymen 
exemption from the obligation of serving on juries, they 
do not regard this as a peculiar favour to Nonconformity. 
Still, in both cases there is a clear recognition of official 
status. Constantine's order was confined to North Africa 
in the first instance ; subsequently it was extended to the 
whole empire. 

Second, Constantine granted contributions from the 
imperial treasury for the building of churches and towards 
the support of the clergy. It may be said that similar 
grants had been made to the pagan temples and their 
officers, so that this was a case of concurrent endowment. 
But, as far as we know, all Constantine's favour in this 
form was shown to the Christians. Here was indeed a 
dangerous power — the power of the purse. In accepting 
the money of the State the Church was deliberately 
putting herself more or less under the control of the 
State. Besides, this favouritism, which was a departure 
from the large liberalism of the Edict of Milan in spirit, 
though not in the letter, roused the jealousy and alarm of 
the old temple authorities. Constantine was thus pro- 
voking to enmity a party with huge vested interests at 
stake. This party found a champion in Licinius, the 
second Augustus. Licinius could have been only a half- 
hearted supporter of the Edict of Milan ; he was unable 
to resist Constantine's desire for his concurrence when it 
was issued, had he wished to do so. But at a later time 
he threw in his lot with the disaffected pagan party, and 
by means of the support he thus obtained broke connection 
with Constantine and claimed independence. So long as 
he could hold his own he pursued an openly pagan policy, 
forbidding the Christians to assemble in their churches, 



CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 



39 



and leaving them only to worship in the open air, excluding 
them from the civil service, banishing some, and perhaps 
even proceeding to inflict the death penalty in a few cases. 
But before he could go far in this direction his defeat by 
Constantine, followed by his death, put an end to the 
pagan reaction (a.d. 324). 

As sole emperor, Constantine now had a free hand. 
For the second time, flushed with victory over a champion 
of paganism, he proceeded to a much more emphatic 
patronage of Christianity; he even issued a rescript 
urging his subjects to become Christians. There was no 
direct violation of the edict of toleration in this decree. 
Everybody was still left free to follow his own choice. 
The decree was but an exhortation. Still it meant much. 
Next we see Constantine interfering in matters of Church 
government. In the first instance this was on the 
invitation of the Christians for the settlement of the 
Novatian schism, a schism mainly turning on a question of 
discipline. Constantine was reluctant to interfere, and 
when he did so, he wisely appointed bishops as assessors. 
Still, the fatal step was taken. Before long emperors 
will be seen tampering with ecclesiastical affairs on their 
own initiative, without any appeal from the Church, and 
that even in questions of doctrine. 

Nevertheless, Constantine was careful not to com- 
pletely alienate the pagan party. He retained the office 
of Pontifex Maximus and thus secured his influence at 
Eome. He had the image of the sun-god impressed on 
one side of his coins, while the monogram of Christ was 
stamped on the other side. He ordered the Government 
offices and law courts to be closed on the Christian day of 
worship, but he referred to this day by its pagan title as 
" the venerable day of the sun." He went so far in the 
direction of syncretism as to order a prayer of pure 
theism for use in his army. His conception of Chris- 
tianity was never very profound. At heart he seems 
to have been an eclectic theist with a distinct pre- 
ference for Christianity and a measure of real belief in 



40 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



it; and in these respects his State policy reflects his 
own ideas. 

The effect of Christianity on legislation, always slow 
in so conservative a region where precedent is power, 
begins hopefully under Constantine. The emperor put an 
end to crucifixion — as a desecration of the cross of Christ, 
the breaking of the legs of criminals, and the branding of 
slaves. According to Eusebius he forbade sacrifices to 
idols, divination, the erecting of images, and gladiatorial 
combats.^ If so, the law was a dead letter ; for certainly 
all these things went on for generations after the time of 
Constantine. Possibly we have here a reference to some 
of his pious exhortations, such as that in which he invited 
all his subjects to become Christians. But although 
Constantine even patronised the amphitheatre as late as the 
year 323, when he received a panegyric for so doing, and 
two years later sanctioned the establishment of new 
gladiatorial games at Spello in Umbria — the force of public 
passion for this cruel sport being simply irresistible among 
the Italians — it was never introduced into his new city of 
Constantinople. Then, though slavery was continued, 
masters were forbidden to kill or torture their slaves, 
and manumission was facilitated. The cruel lot of 
prisoners was mitigated ; they were not to be so chained 
up as to suffer from want of light and air. Debtors were 
not to be scourged, and they were to be brought to trial 
as quickly as possible. Above all, the position of woman 
was elevated. Adultery was treated as a crime to be 
punished ; concubinage was forbidden, though intercourse 
with a female slave was not regarded as such ; the old 
freedom of divorce was abolished ; marriage received high 
sanctions ; and assaults on consecrated virgins and widows 
were made punishable with death. Thus Constantine's 
legislation moved in the direction of humaneness and 
purity — two characteristic ideas of Christian ethics. 

1 FU. Cm. iv. 25. 



CHAPTER III 



ARIANISM 

(a) The historians mentioned in the previous chapter ; Athanasius, 

Orationes Con. Arianos, Hist. Arianorum, etc. ; fragments of 
Philostorgius, the Arian historian. 
(6) Gwatkin, Arian Controversy^ 1889, a masterly authority ; 
Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century, 1838— the 2nd edition, 
1854, is unaltered, a vigorous but polemical treatise ; Hefele, 
History of the Councils, Eng. Trans., vol. i., 1872. 

Arianism caused the most serious division in the Church 
that has occurred during the whole course of the history of 
Christendom. It was the most momentous subject of 
controversy during the fourth century, the age of the 
greatest Fathers of the Eastern Church, the age of its 
keenest polemics and most masterly theological literature. 
The Mcene Creed, the essential standard of doctrine for 
the orthodox in the East, was formulated for the express 
purpose of excluding and crushing this heresy, which at 
times held its head so high, encouraged by imperial favour, 
that it threatened to dominate the Church and supplant 
the rival orthodox theology. So serious was the question 
deemed to be, that it was treated as of primary importance 
to the State, and the chief factor of politics throughout 
the century was the attitude of the emperors towards 
Arianism. During all this time it was essentially a 
question of the Eastern Church ; the West was but little 
affected, although a protagonist in the controversy was 
Hosius of Cordova. Hilary of Poitiers was *the only 
Western theologian of importance to take part in the con- 
troversy at this early stage. Much later, after Arianism had 

41 



42 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



been stamped out in the East, it became dominant in the 
West, coming in with the invading Goths who were heretics 
without knowing it, having become such in a way by 
accident, simply because the great missionary Ulfilas, to 
whom they owed their conversion happened to be an 
Arian. Thus the later Arianism of the West was purely 
adventitious, a mere result of the migration of peoples. 
The real home of Arianism is the East, and it is with the 
Eastern Church that the great controversy is almost 
entirely concerned. It therefore demands some attention 
in the present volume, although it has been treated in two 
previous works of the same Series.^ 

The origin of this tremendous controversy, which shook 
the whole fabric of the Church down to its foundations — 
like that of many a mighty river which may be traced 
back to a little runnel of water trickling down the hillside 
— was seemingly quite insignificant. Arius, from whom 
the heresy derives its name, was a presbyter of the Church 
at Alexandria, where the presbyterate retained its import- 
ance longer than in other places, and he exercised the 
functions of pastor in the neighbouring village church of 
Baukalis from about the year a.d. 313. Five years later 
(a.d. 318) he accused his bishop Alexander of Sabellianism. 
That his motive in doing so was jealousy on account of his 
disappointment at not having been elected to the episcopate 
has not been proved, and we must always be on our guard 
against the personalities that are continually being bandied 
to and fro among the ecclesiastical controversiahsts, and 
constitute the most painful and humiliating features of 
Church history. Alexander saved the situation by turning 
the tables on his daring opponent and accusing Arius of 
false teaching. Thus, as has often happened, the heresy- 
hunter himself turned out to be a heretic. There can be 
no doubt in this case that Arius was in the wrong. That 
Alexander was not a Sabellian is proved by his statement 
of his views contained in an important epistle. On the 
other hand, undoubtedly Arius was a heretic, in the 
^ Fisher, History of Christia/n Doctrine ; Rainy, T?ie Ancient Church. 



ARIANISM 



43 



technical sense of the term ; that is to say, he advocated 
private opinions that were at variance with the general 
trend of Church teaching. 

Although Arianism sprang up in Alexandria, its roots 
have been traced back to Antioch. Origen had taught a 
strong subordination doctrine; but he had affirmed the 
eternal generation of the Son, and the tone and temper of 
his thought were alien to what we see in Arianism. The 
great Alexandrian theology was intensely Platonic, and 
the development of the orthodox faith during the fourth 
century was largely controlled by an infusion of Platonism ; 
but the dry, hard, logical method of Arius was Aristotelian, 
and so was that of the school of Antioch. Harnack says, 
" This school is the parent of Arian doctrine and Lucian 
its head is the Arius before Arius." ^ Nevertheless, Pro- 
^ fessor Gwatkin traces it to Alexandrian heathenism. 

The gravamen of Arius' objection to Alexander's teaching 
was the doctrine of the eternity of the Son of God, which, 
he maintained, involved Sabellianism. On the other hand, 
the non-eternity of the Second Person of the Trinity was 
the starting-point of Arianism. Pressed into a corner, 
Arius will not say that " there was a time when He was 
not," because time itself did not then exist, since it began 
with creation, and He was before all other things ; but he 
affirms that " there was when He was not." As he 
develops his system the following features emerge : — 

1. The unity of God. He alone is neither generated 
nor created — eternal, essential being, to 6V, Deity apart 
from all else. Arius is in sympathy with the heathen and 
later Jewish conception of the transcendence of God. 

2. The independent personality of Christ. Here Arius 
is in direct antagonism to Sabellianism. Extreme op- 
ponents of Arius — Marcellus, Photius, etc. — went over 
the knife-edge of orthodoxy on the other side and became 
Sabellian. Every system of thought that has enlisted 
the sympathies of earnest men has its merits, and one 
of the merits of Arianism is that it tended to rescue the 

^ History of Dogma, Eng. Traus,, vol. iv. p. 3. 



44 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

idea of a Mediator, of an actual personal Redeemer of the 
world revealed in the gospel, an idea that was becoming 
swamped in metaphysical conceptions of the Godhead. 

3. The origin of Christ by creation. According to 
Arius, the sonship of Christ was only a figurative con- 
ception. God could not really have a Son begotten of 
His own nature. Christ must have been made, created 
out of nothing, and that by the will of God. He was 
made before all other creatures ; and the difference 
between His origin and that of the rest of the universe 
was that He was created directly by God, while all other 
existences that came into being were created through Him. 

4. He had no human soul. The exalted being Christ 
came down and was incarnate in a human body ; that 
was all. Thus the problem of the nature of Christ 
was simplified. There was no complexity of a double 
consciousness. 

5. Christ was naturally mutable. He could turn to 
evil, if He so chose. 

6. A somewhat inconsistent part of the system was the 
contention that Christ received Divine honours in recogni- 
tion of His worthy conduct. At this point Arianism is 
linked on to adoptionism. It is not easy to harmonise 
such a conception with Arius's idea of the pre-existing 
Christ ; but the reconciliation is sought in the Divine 
foreknowledge. God foresaw how Christ would conduct 
Himself and rewarded Him accordingly by anticipation. 

Arianism was an extremely simple system ; herein 
was its recommendation. It professed to be free from 
the obscurities of the popular theology. It banished 
mystery from religion. Its appeal was to logic. Further, 
it claimed to be conservative, falling back on the verbal 
sense of Scripture against the speculative elaborations of 
metaphysical theology; but its range of scriptural 
authority was small, a mere group of texts arbitrarily 
selected and in some cases wilfully misapplied. In this 
matter both parties were almost equally guilty of offending 
against sound principles of textual exegesis. 



ARIANISM 



45 



still, when we make due allowance for all such con- 
siderations, it may yet strike us as remarkable that a 
system so artificial in structure, and so harsh in outline, 
should have won its way in the Church. The objections 
to it were obvious. On the face of it Arianism toned 
down the honour that enthusiastic Christians were eagerly 
offering to their Lord. While it allowed of a Mediator, 
this strange being was neither God nor man, neither 
united to the Divine on the one hand nor to the human 
on the other. Thus the gulf still remained unbridged, 
and all that was offered was a monstrous figure standing 
isolated in the middle of it ; or if we view the idea another 
way, while Christ was not one with us in human nature. 
He did belong to our created nature, so that if we think 
of God on one side of the gulf and creation on the other, 
Christ adheres completely to the side of creation, and 
there is no real mediation at all. Nevertheless, it is 
allowed that some measure of worship may be offered to 
Him, and He may be called God in a secondary sense, as 
the locust is called the " great power " of God.^ But then, 
since He is but a creature, such worship is the worship 
of the creature, that is to say, idolatry. The essential 
paganism of the scheme was apparent to Athanasius, who 
urged this charge home against the Arians. They were 
importing the demi-god of the heathen world into the 
Church of the only true, living God. 

Since these objections are obvious, we may wonder 
how it came about that Arianism got a lodgment in the 
Church, spread so rapidly, and attained to so much 
influence as was the case. Something may be set down 
to the personal fascination of its author. Athanasius' 
first attack on the heresy is based on its name, the 
Arians naming themselves after a man while the 
orthodox called themselves simply " Christians." This 
is significant, showing that the name was not a label 
attached to them by their enemies, like the .title 
" Swedenborgian " commonly given to the community 

^ See Athanasius, Orat. CoiU. Avian, i. 6. 



46 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

that calls itself the " New Church." The Arians were 
proud of Arius — at least this was the case in the early 
days ; later, when opprobrium had been heaped on his 
name, some of them were not so eager to claim it. 

Arius appears before us as a strange figure — a tall, 
gaunt man, wearing his hair in a tangled mass, with a 
wild look in his eyes, and restless convulsive movements 
in his limbs, ascetic in his habits, generally grave and 
silent, but capable of fierce excitement when fairly 
roused, and very attractive in the earnestness of his 
manner and the sweetness of his voice. He resorted to 
a dubious device for the popularising of his doctrines, 
composing dry, didactic hymns in the metre of vulgar 
banquet songs, to the scandal of sober Churchmen, but 
indicating that he knew how to catch the ear of the 
public. These hymns would be sung to lively music and 
dancing —a curious compound of worldly gaiety and 
orgiastic pagan practices, inherited from the ancient 
religion of the Egyptians and continued down to the 
present day in the weird practices of the dervishes. 

Still, it is doubtful if Arius would have made much 
headway if he had been left to propagate his ideas on 
their own merits and only by the force of his unaided 
influence. Alexander summoned a synod of neighbouring 
bishops which excommunicated the heretic, who then left 
Egypt and visited leading ecclesiastics in Syria and Asia 
Minor, from some of whom he received sympathetic 
treatment. But there was one man whose adhesion was 
the making of his cause. This was Eusebius of Nicomedia, 
the most powerful prelate in the East, an old friend of 
Arius, who soon became the real leader of the party, and 
to whom must be attributed the political character of 
the movement in its subsequent development. "With the 
obscure presbyter Arius it was only a ferment working 
locally ; under the hands of the great bishop Eusebius it 
leaped into imperial importance, so that the settlement of 
it became a first concern of the State with Constantine 
himself. After this, political intrigues in the interests of 



ARIANISM 



47 



men and parties had more influence in its dominance 
and extension than theological arguments. Although for 
long periods Arianism was the recognised religion of 
Eastern Christendom, this was mainly because the plots 
of diplomacy had secured for it imperial favour. A 
majority of the bishops of the Greek portion of the 
Church were Arian for a time, but only because the 
adherents of the opposite party had been violently 
deposed by acts of despotism and their successors thrust 
into their sees and imposed upon their flocks against the 
will of the people. There is nothing to show that the 
main body of the Church in the East was ever Arian ; 
and certainly this was never the case in the West. 
Lastly, we must notice how the Arians obtained support 
from an unexpected quarter quite adventitiously, by the 
adhesion of the Meletians. These people, the party of 
Meletius, a bishop of Lycopolis, the modern Assiut — in 
the fourth century second only in importance to 
Alexandria, who had been condemned purely on grounds 
of discipline and apart from any suspicion of doctrinal 
error, threw in their lot with the Arians, and so helped 
to swell the body of the heretics in common opposition 
to the dominant majority. 

Fortified by the encouragement he had obtained when 
on his travels, Arius returned to Alexandria and organised 
a church of his followers in defiance of his bishop. This 
was an act of independence which could only be regarded 
by an ecclesiastic as one of rebellion. The crisis was 
becoming acute. So widespread was the quarrel now, 
and so bitter the spirit it was engendering, that it 
became a matter of serious concern to Constantine. This 
is a plain proof of its great importance. 

Here is a pitiable situation indeed, a most painful 
instance of the irony of history. No sooner has peace 
been established between State and Church than the State 
interferes to preserve the peace of the Church. Still half 
a pagan, quite a novice, in character sadly below the 
Christian standard, the recently converted emperor finds 



48 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

it necessary to rebuke the faults of the Church in order 
to prevent it from ruining its own cause. One might 
have thought that the Christians would have blushed 
for shame to have brought down upon their heads the 
moral disapproval of a convert. But that would be 
viewing the case from the emperor's point of view. To 
Alexander and his friends it would appear in a very 
different light. Constantine wrote a letter to Alexander 
urging a settlement of the dispute, on the calm assumption 
that the ground of it was quite trivial, and treating 
the bishops concerned almost as though they were a group 
of quarrelling schoolboys. Thus he says in the course of 
his letter : " For the cause of your difference has not 
been any of the leading doctrines or precepts of the 
Divine law, nor has any new heresy respecting the worship 
of God arisen among you. You are in truth of one and 
the same judgment ; you may therefore well join in 
communion and fellowship. For as long as you continue 
to contend about these small and very insignificant 
questions, it is not fitting that so large a portion of 
God's people should be under the direction of your 
judgment, since you are thus divided between your- 
selves." ^ In reading such words we do not know 
whether to admire most the amazing arrogance that 
presumes to attempt the settlement of religious difference 
by a message of imperial authority, or the sublime 
simplicity that is totally incapable of perceiving the 
gravity of the question at issue or the depth of the 
fissure in the Church that it is producing. Not a 
" new heresy " — " one and the same judgment " — " small 
and very insignificant questions " — these are phrases that 
indicate total incapacity to grasp the actual issues of 
the dispute. The letter is a living, characteristic docu- 
ment, in every paragraph revealing its writer as the 
man of the world who would brush aside the most 
serious theological discussions as mere hair-spHtting, but 
also the earnest, practical statesman who is anxious to 
1 Fit. Const, ii. 70, 71. 



ARIANISM 



49 



establish peace in the community for the government of 
which he is responsible. 

Constantine's object was excellent ; but it was not 
Ions before he learnt that the first method he had 
employed for securing it was utterly futile. This olive 
branch had no effect whatever ; the document was 
literally a dead letter. It had been accompanied by 
one of the emperor's chaplains, a man highly venerated 
in the Church, who was to play a prominent part in the 
subsequent negotiations, Hosius, the bishop of Cordova. 
But even this good and able man's efforts at effecting 
a settlement on the spot were quite abortive. 

Then the emperor resorted to another method much 
wiser, much more practical He summoned the bishops of 
the whole Church to discuss the question and settle it by 
vote. This is the first instance of any attempt at a gather- 
ing representing the general body of Christians throughout 
the world. Local councils had been held in various districts 
— in Asia, at Eome, at Aries, at Carthage, at Alexandria, 
and elsewhere. Now for the first time there was sum- 
moned a general council, as distinguished from a provincial 
synod. It was the large-minded, widely comprehensive 
imperialism of Constantine that gave birth to the idea. 
The emperor summoned the council and paid the expenses 
of the members out of the funds of the State. This 
precedent was so much recognised in the summoning of later 
councils that the Church of England formally recognised it in 
the 21st of the Thirty -nine Articles : " General councils may 
not be gathered together but by the commandment and will 
of princes." Still, this council aimed at going beyond the 
limits of the empire in including the whole Church, and in 
point of fact two bishops from beyond its border — John of 
Persia and Theophilus of Scythia — were present in the 
assembly. The great idea was that the Church was to settle 
its disputes for itself. " Councils," writes Dean Stanley 
when summing up their characteristics, " are also the first 
precedents of the principle of representative government." ^ 

* Eastern Church, Lecture ii. 

4 



50 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Presbyters and deacons were present, as well as bishops ; and 
the latter were really popular representatives, since they 
had been elected by universal suffrage in their churches. 

This first and most momentous general council met in 
the year a.d. 325 at Mcsea, a small town at the head of a 
sea loch where the Bithynian mountains descend towards 
the shore not far from Nicomedia, the emperor's Eastern 
capital before the building of Constantinople. The quarrel 
in the Church that occasioned the summoning of the bishops 
arose in the East and essentially concerned the East ; the 
council met in the East ; it consisted almost entirely of the 
representatives of Eastern churches. Although bishops had 
been called from all over the empire, and beyond, and although 
the proceedings of the council were recognised and endorsed 
in the West, it was to all intents and purposes an Oriental 
assembly. The same may be said of all the ancient 
councils ; they were all held in the East and they all con- 
sisted almost entirely of Eastern prelates. At Nicaea there 
were only seven bishops from the whole area covered by 
the Latin Church. Sylvester, the bishop of Eome, was not 
present, his age being his reason or excuse for not attending, 
and he was represented by two presbyters. This was in no 
sense a papal council. It was not summoned by the pope ; 
it was not presided over by the pope. Hefele argues that 
Hosius, who sat in a place of honour next to the emperor, 
was really in this position because he represented the West 
for the pope. But his close relations with Constantine 
and the leading part he had taken in the preliminary 
negotiations added to the weight of his personal character 
will account for the dignified position that was accorded to 
him. Besides, Sylvester's representation by the two pres- 
byters is inconsistent with this notion. In the absence of 
the emperor Hosius appears to have presided in turn with 
three other bishops, Eustathius of Antioch, Alexander of 
Alexandria, and Eusebius of Csesarea — the learned historian 
whom we must not confound with the Arian leader, 
Eusebius of Nicomedia. These three were all Eastern 
bishops. 



ARIANISM 



51 



The dangerous temper of the assembly was seen at the 
commencement, in the fact that a number of letters con- 
taining charges against various bishops were presented to 
the emperor ; and Constantine's good sense and pacific 
intentions were as quickly revealed by his calling for a 
brazier at his first meeting with the council, and burning the 
whole sheaf of them unread. He had come to make peace, 
and his policy was toleration, not repression, or expulsion, 
or persecution. It was not his fault that the course of the 
discussion took another turn. Constantine spoke in a gentle 
voice and with a modest demeanour, calling himself a bishop, 
evidently with the sole object of softening the asperity of 
the debate and obtaining a pacific decision. But Arius was 
soon denounced in the most angry terms and expelled from 
the assembly. 

Members of the lower clergy, although perhaps they had 
no votes, were allowed to be present and contribute to the 
discussion, so free and open was it. This liberty gave his 
opportunity to the hero of the whole controversy, the one 
man who was soon to tower head and shoulders over every- 
body else by sheer force of intellectual energy and moral 
earnestness, Alexander's attendant deacon, the young 
Athanasius. The romance of the Arian period circles 
round this great man in his strange adventures, his hair- 
breadth escapes, his magnanimous victories ; but better 
than that, it is he who lifts the whole controversy out of the 
miserable arena of person and party, seizes on its really sig- 
nificant features, and holds to the vital issues notwithstand- 
ing calumny, spite, and brutal violence, with a tenacity that 
is perfectly heroic until he brings them out to a triumphant 
issue. Then, best of all, he reveals true greatness of soul 
and the generosity of a genuine Christian character, by 
insisting only on what is vital, by labouring to bury the old 
quarrel, by gladly welcoming back old opponents when they 
return to what he holds to be the true faith. 

Guided by this young deacon, who soon proved himself 
to be the most masterly theologian present, the assembly 
that had quickly determined to stamp out Arianism was 



52 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



able to accomplish the more difficult task of settling the 
positive creed of the Church, And yet Athanasius was far 
too real and large-minded to care much for the mere 
phrases of any creed. It is a significant fact that while he 
is the indomitable champion of the Nicene ideal, he rarely 
uses in his writings the term that became the watchword 
of the Nicene party and their battle-cry in conflict with 
opponents — the word Homoousios} At an early stage of 
the discussion the Arians saw that there was no chance of 
their own specific phrases being allowed by the council. 
Accordingly they fell back on Scripture language. In their 
simplicity the majority of the Fathers seemed disposed to 
acquiesce in this way out of the difficulty. Then a bomb- 
shell was thrown into the meeting in the shape of a letter 
from Eusebius of Nicomedia, declaring the assertion that 
the Son was uncreated to be equivalent to saying that He 
was of one essence (homoousios) with the Father. The 
assembly seized on the word; it was just what they 
wanted. The Son was of one essence with the Father. 
So the fight raged round this word. Here the Arians had 
a certain advantage over their opponents. There was a 
taint of heresy about it. We first meet with it in a 
description of the notions of the Gnostic Valentinus.^ And 
although, according to Pamphilus, it was used by Origen, 
and Tertullian employs the Latin equivalent of the rela- 
tion of the Son to the Father,^ it had been subsequently 
condemned in a synod at Antioch in connection with the 
heresy of Paul of Samosata, either as descriptive of his own 
idea of the Godhead, or in repudiation of Sabellian ten- 
dencies by his opponents. Thus the Arians were able to 
appeal to precedent, and pose as conservatives, when really 
appealing to prejudice. These two courses — the claim to 
use only Bible language in opposition to the defining phrases 
of scientific theology, and the objection to a dubious term 
as a dangerous innovation in the language of the Church — 
gave Eusebius and his friends some hold on the majority of 

^ ofiooijaLos. 2 See Irengeus, Adv. Hcer. i. 1. 

■ UnitaU SubstanticBf Ajtol. xxi. ; cf. Adv. Praxean. ii 



ARIANISM 



53 



the council, which consisted of country pastors of no theo- 
logical pretensions. It became necessary to expose the 
Arian tactics, and this was done successfully. Nevertheless, 
when the reaction came it was made apparent that the 
final decision of the council had been rather acquiesced in 
by the majority than intelligently conceived and earnestly 
desired. Certainly the majority were not Arian ; but 
neither were they at this time convinced of the necessity 
of the technical language of the opponents of Arianism. 
Left to themselves they would have been satisfied with a 
simpler solution ; but they were overawed by a few men 
of superior culture and great determination — especially 
Alexander, Athanasius, and Hosius. It was in this way 
that at length they were led to give an almost unanimous 
vote for the final definition. 

The creed thus adopted was based on an old Palestinian 
confession introduced by Eusebius of Caesarea. Hitherto 
there had been no one form of words accepted by all Chris- 
tians as an expression of their faith. Although the " rule 
of faith " was recognised by Irenaeus and insisted on with 
great vehemence by Tertullian, this could not have existed 
in any rigid verbal form, because it is variously worded in 
different places. Therefore the phrase would seem to repre- 
sent simply a generally understood common agreement of 
belief. Still, as early as this time, i.e. by about the end of 
the second century, we have the Apostles' Creed at Eome 
in its primitive form. This, which is the most elementary of 
the creeds, is based on the baptismal formula,^ the basis 
of all the creeds. But there is no reason to believe that 
any elaborate creed was actually repeated by converts at 
baptism. At first renunciation of the old life and faith in 
Christ were the only requisites. In the ^thiopic version 
of the Apostolical Constitutions, representing the oldest text, 
the candidate for baptism says, " I believe in the only true 
God, the Father Almighty, and in His only begotten Son, 
Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, and in the Holy Ghost 
the Giver of life" — with other phrases 'which must have 
^J^att. xxviii. 19. 



54 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



been inserted after the council of Nicsea. Meanwhile the 
creeds were growing up, probably as schedules of doctrine 
in use by the teachers of catechumens. In this way the 
example of Rome was followed, and thus among others 
was produced that early Palestinian creed which was 
adopted as the base of the Nicene Creed. When this was 
adopted by the council it became the first creed established 
by authority for the whole Church. Even then only the 
clergy were required to sign it. It was a test for the clergy, 
not a condition of membership in the Church. The laity 
were not required to assent to it. And yet a great step 
had been taken towards the fixing of orthodoxy. Hitherto 
there had been no one formal standard by which a Church 
teacher's doctrine could be settled. Now there was an end 
to this Ante-Mcene liberty. Henceforth any divergence 
from the established formula on the part of a bishop or 
priest would involve the loss of office and even excom- 
munication. A series of stern anathemas was added to the 
creed to secure this end. All the members of the council 
were required to sign the document ; the five who refused 
were deposed from the posts they held and expelled from 
the Church. The Catholic Church was now to be the 
orthodox Church, and orthodoxy was made the test 
of Catholicity. 

On the other hand, it should be noted that points not 
in the creed were left open. When we consider how large 
a part of the field of theology was thus not fenced in, 
the silence becomes significant : moreover, if a standard of 
orthodoxy was necessary, here was one that guarded the 
very citadel of the faith. After all, when we penetrate 
behind phrases to facts, we see that with an earnest, 
large-minded man such as Athanasius the real test was 
not subscription to a highly technical creed ; it was what 
that subscription implied, namely, loyalty to the Divine- 
human Christ. 

Some other matters were also settled at the council of 
Nicsea. The Paschal controversy, which had divided some 
of the churches of Asia Minor who kept Easter on the 



ARIANISM 



55 



Jewish plan only according to the day of the month, from 
the churches of the West and others that agreed with them 
who fixed it according to the day of the week, was decided 
in favour of the Western usage. At the time many 
thought this as important as the Arian question. The 
Meletians were condemned and their ordination disallowed. 
Lastly, certain canons of discipline were passed. But the 
council had been summoned to settle the Arian dispute and 
its decision on this was absolute and peremptory. Then 
Constantine came in with the power of the State to enforce 
the ruling of the Church, denouncing the Arians as " Por- 
phyrians," banishing Arius and his few determined followers, 
and ordering all Arian books to be burnt — which indeed 
was not so cruel as the action of the princes of the time of 
the Inquisition, who burnt the heretics themselves — and 
threatening death to anybody detected in concealing a 
book compiled by Arius ^ — a most significant, a truly 
ominous threat. 

Nevertheless, the dispute was far from being settled. 
Instead of being the end, this was but the beginning of the 
great Arian controversy which was to ravage the Church 
and almost rend the empire for more than half a century 
longer, and even after that to linger on and break out 
again in unexpected quarters. It is true that at first the 
Arian protest was reduced to insignificant proportions. 
Two of Arius's friends deserted him and signed the creed ; 
so that of the five who had supported Arius throughout 
the discussion only two bishops stood by him at the end 
and shared his penalty of exile. But a sign of coming 
trouble might have been detected in the conciliatory action 
of one of the most pacific of men. Eusebius of Caesarea, 
the famous historian, the most learned scholar of his day, 
wrote to his Church explaining the sense in which he had 
signed the creed ; and his explanation amounted to what was 
afterwards known as " Semi-Arianism," for he interpreted 
the test word " homoousios " in the sense of resemblance, 
saying that "it suggests that the Son of God bears no 

^ Soci ates, i. 9. 



56 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



resemblance to the creature, but is in every respect like 
the Father only who begat him." ^ Many must have given 
their assent to the creed without really knowing what they 
were signing; others must have been overawed by the 
imperial authority conjoined to the vehement insistence 
of the majority, and when released from the pressure of the 
council and the emperor's presence these people soon 
showed that they had no love for the creed, and some of 
them ventured to come forward as champions of Arius. 
Then an immense weight was swung into the scale of re- 
^^ction. Constantine recalled the banished bishops and 
ordered the restoration of Arius. This amazing change of 
front has been attributed to the influence of his sister 
Constantia, who was a patroness of Eusebius of Nicomedia, 
to the fact — perhaps due to this court influence — that 
Eusebius superseded Hosius in the emperor's favour, to 
the diplomatic subtlety of the Arians, and to other causes, 
all of which may have played their parts in what had now 
become a political drama of huge dimensions. But we 
must not forget that Constantine's aim throughout was 
mainly peace and good order throughout his dominions. 
This was apparent in his first act of interference, the 
famous letter to Alexander. At first he had sought peace 
by silencing discussion ; then, finding this expedient un- 
successful, he took the course of supporting uniformity and 
suppressing dissent ; this too proving ineffectual, he 
returned to the idea of comprehension which he had 
advocated at first. But whether by forcible uniformity 
or by violent comprehensiveness, his aim was to end the 
irritating polemic. First he tried a soothing medicine ; 
next he took up the surgeon's knife ; finally he resorted 
to ecclesiastical splints, a forcible binding together of the 
body of the Church which he saw split by faction, working 
continuously with the one aim of ending the dispute. Thus 
at last the emperor appears in the paradoxical role of a 
despot insisting on toleration. 

' Socrates, i. 8. There are several versions and accounts of the letter, 
but this appears to be the most sober and reliable. 



ARIANISM 



57 



Worn out by fatigues and anxieties, the aged Alexander 
died three years after the council of Nicsea (a.d. 328), 
nominating Athanasius his deacon to be his successor 
as bishop of Alexandria. The Church accepted his 
nomination, and duly elected the champion of the faith. 
Nevertheless this decision was challenged, and the most 
cruel charges were trumped up against the new bishop by 
absolutely unscrupulous enemies. The next chapter in the 
history of the Arian dispute is largely occupied with the 
romantic story of the adventures of Athanasius, his startling 
vicissitudes of fortune, his hairbreadth escapes, his heroic 
course of fidelity, though at times he seemed to stand alone. 
But this isolation was more apparent than real, for probably 
at no time was the majority of people in the Church Arian. 
The West was alwg,ys at heart with Athanasius, when this 
was possible openly so ; and great numbers of quiet people 
in the East did not really acquiesce in the Arian tyranny 
to which they were forced to submit. But Athanasius never 
allowed himself to be coerced into yielding. Meanwhile 
there were synods, packed with Arian bishops — at Tyre, 
removed to Jerusalem (a.d. 335), and at Constantinople 
(a.d. 336). Athanasius was condemned at Tyre on 
trumpery charges and banished to Treves by Constantino, 
and Alexander the bishop of Constantinople, to his con- 
sternation, was ordered to receive Arius into the Church. 
The sudden awful death of Arius at the height of his 
triumph saved the bishop from his dilemma. The next 
year Constantino died, taking care to be baptised in his last 
illness. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 

(a) Authorities mentioned in previous chapters ; Basil, Gregory 
Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa (Eng. Trans, in Nicene and 
Post-Nicene Fathers) ; Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History 
(Bohn). 

(6) Works named in previous chapters ; Kendall, The Emperor 
Julian, 1879 ; Gaetano Negri, Julian the Apostate, 2nd edit. 
1902, Eng. Trans., 1905. 

The death of Constantine (a.d. 337), followed by the 
division of his empire between his three sons, Constantine ii. 
and Constans in the West, and Constantius in the East, 
introduces us to a new chapter in the history of Arianism. 
The first of these rulers died three years later while fighting 
against his brother Constans, who thus became sole master 
of the West, and there championed the Athanasian cause 
without difficulty, since Arianism found all its support in 
the Eastern provinces. Constantius, on the other hand, 
had Arian leanings, and he oppressed the orthodoxy that 
had seemed so triumphant at Nicaea a few years before. 
In so acting he was largely influenced by his jealousy of 
Athanasius, whose influence rivalled that of the emperor. 
This was a very different policy from the persecution of the 
Nicene party by Constantine, which had always been carried 
on in the name of toleration, in order to force the Athanasians 
to fraternise with the Arians. Pompous, vain, mean, cruel, 
Constantius was quite incapable of inheriting his father's 
large ideas ; he was frankly intolerant, throwing his in- 
fluence wholly into the scale of the Arian faction. At 
first, however, he was compelled to proceed warily and his 



THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 



59 



initial actions even favoured the Nicene party, so that for 
the moment his accession might have been regarded as the 
end of the oppression of orthodoxy. This was simply due 
to the influence of the Western emperors. Until he was 
firmly established in power, Constantius dared not openly 
flout his brothers' wishes. Thus we have the paradox that 
the exile of Athanasius, which had lasted to the end of the 
reign of the liberal-minded Constantine, was terminated by 
his Arianising son Constantius (a.d. 338). Then the patri- 
arch was welcomed back to Alexandria in a scene of popular 
rejoicing that was compared to our Lord's triumphal entry 
into Jerusalem. It was a shortlived triumph. The wily 
Eusebius of Mcomedia, past master of court intrigue, 
wormed himself into the favour of Constantius, got pro- 
moted to the Constantinople bishopric, and thence swayed 
the imperial counsels so effectually that the whole influence 
of the Government went to favour his party. The temper 
of the Arians against Athanasius was positively spiteful ; 
but the new charge they now brought against him had some 
show of propriety. It was that he had been reinstated by 
the civil power without being restored by the ecclesiastical 
after his deposition at the council of Tyre. What could 
equal the effrontery of such an accusation on the part of 
men who were violating the decrees of the most august 
Church council, ruthlessly setting aside the bishops who 
adhered to them, and unhesitatingly accepting the emperor's 
interference to effect that end ? Still it succeeded ; and 
Athanasius was again banished and a Cappadocian, Gregory, 
sent from the court, was forced on the protesting Church 
at Alexandria amid outrageous scenes of violence (a.d. 339). 

Since such unblushing conduct was seen at the head- 
quarters of orthodoxy in the East, it may be surprising to 
^observe how diplomatically the Arians had to work elsewhere. 
jIn wearisome succession, several councils — most of them 
packed meetings — were held in various places with the 
:hope of getting a final settlement, and to that end distinctive 
Arian phrases were dropped and more neutral expressions 
.substituted. At Sardica — now Sophia (a.d. 343) the 



60 THE GREEK ANU EASTERN CHURCHES 



Athanasians were actually in a majority, and their opponents 
could only get their way by removing farther east, to 
Philippopolis — there to register their decisions comfortably 
without the inconvenience of opposition. This plainly 
shows that the mass of the Church was with Athanasius. 
The powerful Eusebius had died the year before the council 
of Sardica, and two years after that event Gregory also 
died — perhaps murdered. Things were not going well for 
the Arians, and Constans seized the opportunity to force 
his brother, under threat of war, to let Athanasius return 
to his see. Constantius actually himself received the 
patriarch quite graciously. But the death of Constans in 
350 put an end to the truce. Now that Constantius was 
undisputed master of the empire, the Arians sprang into 
power and became quite overbearing and most trucu- 
lent. After hairbreadth escapes and romantic adventures 
Athanasius fled up the Nile and took refuge with the 
monks in the desert. The venerable Hosius and Liberius 
the bishop of Eome were detained in captivity till their 
patience was worn down and they both signed a virtually 
Arian confession. It was a dark period for the Nicene 
faith. Still the time was not all lost Athanasius in his 
quiet retreat now wrote some of his most important works, 
including his famous Four Discourses on Arianism and his 
History of the heresy. So things went on for eleven dreary 
years, till the death of Constantius (a.d. 361) brought 
deliverance from an unexpected quarter in the advent of a 
pagan emperor. 

Julian, the cousin and successor of Constantius, has 
been execrated in the Church as " the Apostate." When at 
liberty to show his hand he manifested bitter antipathy to 
Christianity, after apparently having been baptised in his 
infancy — a fact, if this were the case, for which it would 
be hard to make him responsible. While in the power of 
his cousin Constantius, he had conformed, as he was bound 
to do unless he had developed a very precocious martyr 
conscience. But as soon as he was free to act for himself 
he threw off the hateful yoke of his oppressors religion. 



THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 



61 



Consider in what light Christianity must have appeared to 
the boy Julian. It was the religion of the man who had 
murdered his father and every member of his family except 
one brother, and that merely in accordance with the 
Oriental monarch's drastic policy of clearing off dangerous 
rivals. Then Julian never knew true Christianity. The 
form in which it had been forced on him in his boyhood 
was Arianism ; but that was by no means the worst feature 
of the case — the great apostle of the Goths was an Arian ; 
Arianism could present an attractive aspect. But the 
young prince had been drilled in hard monkish ways. 
When he was out walking he had to keep his eyes fixed on 
the pavement in order to avoid the sight of vanity. He 
was allowed no companions of his own age. The specimens 
of Christian profession he witnessed in the circle of his 
acquaintance had little of the savour of godliness. They 
were court chaplains — adroit in political intrigue, fierce par- 
tisans of polemical theology, jealous ecclesiastics. Nothing 
was done to awaken in Julian an appreciation of the 
genuine graces of the gospel. But he was compelled to 
attend the heartless services that he inwardly loathed. 
Who can wonder that his young, ardent nature revolted, 
that his eager soul was full of bitterness ? On the other 
hand, forbidden to attend the lectures of the Neo-Platonist 
Libanius, who was the greatest teacher of the day, he 
obtained copies of them, read them with the more avidity 
since " stolen waters are sweet," and at length allowed 
himself to be secretly initiated at the temple of Artemis. 
When Julian was permitted to go up to the university of 
Athens, he threw himself with hot enthusiasm into the 
intellectual life of this centre of pagan learning. He 
revelled in the classics, charmed with Hellenic culture, 
both its mythology and its philosophy. Intercourse with 
the liberalising pagan society at Athens made him look 
back with disgust on the old prison days, in which his 
tutors had been his jailers. Here he felt the pulse of a 
larger life, free and vivacious, sunny and natural. 

Julian had no political ambition. Like Marcus Aurelius, 



62 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

a much greater philosophical emperor, he was distressed at 
the call of duty that compelled him to plunge into practical 
affairs when he would so much have preferred the con- 
templative life. The difficulties of the empire having 
constrained Constantius to recall him from his studies and 
make a Caesar of him, Julian is said to have exclaimed, 
" Plato, what a task for a philosopher ! " Yet he 
proved a capable general when in charge of the troops in 
Gaul, who forced him to become emperor in opposition to 
his cousin,^ and a bloody conflict would have been the 
result if Constantius had not died just in time to prevent 
it. At first he was welcomed by all classes — Christian and 
pagan ; for the tyranny of Constantius had become odious 
and unbearable. Julian began his reign with a proclamation 
of complete religious liberty. " Blows and injuries," he 
said, "are not things to change a man's religion." The 
effect of this reversal of pohcy was twofold. In the first 
place, it led to the return of the orthodox CathoHc bishops 
from exile. The death of Constantius had been the signal 
for the people of Alexandria to rise in riot and murder 
George of Cappadocia, who, like Gregory at an earlier 
period, had been forced upon them as patriarch in the 
interests of Arianism. Then once more Athanasius was 
able to come back to his flock. 

In the second place, the oppression of the old pagan 
religions which Constans and Constantius had carried on 
was ended for the brief period of the pagan emperor's reign. 
His predecessors had ordered all " superstition " to cease in 
the temples, and even threatened persons privately sacrificing 
with death — for so we must understand the references to 
earlier legislation in the Theodosian code. The active per- 
secution, however, had not gone beyond the confiscation of 
temple property and the stern punishment of magic. Now 
Julian not only granted freedom for the worship of the old 
gods again ; he ordered the confiscated property to be restored 
without compensation, a hardship on the holders of it for 
the time being in sharp contrast with Constantine's arrange- 

^ Amm. Marc. xx. iv. 14. 



THE LATER AKIAN PERIOD 



63 



ment for the use of the funds of the State in buying back 
Church property for the Christians. Julian's whole influence 
leaned heavily on the pagan side. All the court favour 
was for men of the old religion; and under an absolute 
despotism this must have meant much, quite apart from 
any change of legislation. Knowing which way the wind 
blew, the enemies of the Christians ventured on many an 
act of violence in various localities, and always with im- 
punity, and these local outbreaks led to cases of martyrdom, 
reminding people of the dark days of the Diocletian perse- 
cution. Thus, for insulting the sacrifices, Basil of Ancyra 
was flayed ahve, slowly, seven strips of skin being peeled 
off at a time. Modern psychology will lend some credit to 
the story of a young man named Theodore who was tortured 
at Antioch by the reluctant prefect under orders from 
Julian to punish those people who had been most prominent 
in the procession that had transported the coffin of the 
martyr Babylas from Daphne, where its sacred contents 
were supposed to have silenced the oracle when Julian was 
consulting it, much to the emperor's annoyance. Rufinus got 
the story direct from the lips of its hero,^ who in reply to 
a question whether in the process of scourging and racking 
he had not suffered the most intense pain, said that he felt 
the pain but a very little while, for a young man stood by 
him wiping off the sweat and so strengthening him that 
his time of trial was a season of rapture. 

Later in his reign, Julian, annoyed at the failure of his 
attempts to galvanise the corpse of the old paganism into 
life again, began a subtle attack on the Christians by for- 
bidding them to teach the classics in the schools, on the 
theory that the bible of paganism should only be taught 
by those who beheved in it. So he said of them, " If they 
feel they have gone astray concerning the gods, let them 
go to the churches of the Galilaeans and expound Matthew 
and Luke." To meet this severe blow at the culture of the 
Church, the two Apolhnarises — father and son — set them- 

^ Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. i. 36, who is appealed to by Socrates as the 
authority for the story. See Socrates, iii. 19. 



64 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



selves to the task of turniDg the Scriptures into verse, 
adopting the idioms of classic Greek in the work. 

Julian might have proceeded to actual violence 
had he not been arrested in mid career. His early 
death when fighting the Persians came as a great 
deliverance to the alarmed Church. It was the end of a 
strange tragedy. With all his serious aims, the emperor 
had been made to see that his life was a failure. His 
own religion was a curious compound of old - fashioned 
paganism and Neo-Platonic ideas. He restored the worship 
of the gods at many a neglected shrine, and renewed the 
sacrifices on long deserted altars ; but the misery of it all 
was that the people would not respond. He paid Chris- 
tianity the sincere homage of imitation, organising a regular 
hierarchy with choirs and liturgical services and pulpits 
for the preaching of pagan sermons. He founded pagan 
monasteries and hospitals. It was all in vain. Nobody 
cared. He had all the zeal of a revivaUst. Yet he was 
laughed at by the people of his own reUgion. It has been 
suggested that if he had promoted Koman instead of Greek 
religion he might have met with some success. 

A strange figure ! — as dirty as a saint, if only Julian 
had been a Christian, his grimy hands, his tangled beard — 
at which the people of Antioch laughed outright, his coarse 
clothing rarely changed,^ would have earned him the honour 
of sanctity. Undoubtedly he was a conscientious religious 
devotee, as he was also an honest, indefatigable administrator. 
And yet directly he died the whole fabric of renovated 
paganism that he had toiled so strenuously but single- 
handed to build up fell to the ground like a house of cards. 
It may be said that he failed because he aimed too high. 
Perceiving that the old paganism was dying of its own 
rottenness, he set himself to be its reformer as well as its 
champion. He would support the pagan priests and supply 
the altars with sacrifices ; but then these priests of his 
must show Christian sanctity in their conduct. But they 
had no wish to be screwed up to the new standard of virtue 

^ See Amm. Marc. xxii. xiv. 3. 



THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 



65 



in the name of the hoary old gods who liitherto had let off 
their worshippers on much easier terms. The dismal failure 
of this last attempt at the restoration of paganism with 
which its reformation was to go hand in hand was a plain 
proof that the whole system was outworn. With all his 
enthusiasm Julian's desperate efforts had proved to be no 
better than the galvanising of a corpse. It is true that 
paganism was not actually extinguished for years to 
come ; indeed it is with us to-day, for it is inherent in 
human nature. The Church was able to make a place 
for it by developing her hagiology, which sheltered the 
ancient superstitions of the dead pantheon. But Julian's 
failure demonstrated once for all that the old cult of 
the gods, open and recognised, had gone, and gone for 
ever. 

The simple soldier Jovian whom the army voted into 
the high position of emperor to rescue it from the 
Persians was an orthodox Christian, who, as Theodoret 
states,^ hesitated to accept the honour till he was assured of 
the Christian sympathies, and with his accession to power 
the brief gleam of sunshine which had broken out so un- 
expectedly on the fading faith of the old regime died away 
never to revive. Not only paganism, but its sometime ally 
Arianism, also suffered by the accession of an emperor who 
belonged to the Nicene party. Jovian lost no time in 
reversing the policy of his predecessor, giving an early in- 
dication of this change by restoring the Labarum which 
Julian had laid aside. He issued an edict granting full 
religious liberty to his subjects. This was a revival of 
Constantino's large-minded statesmanship; it permitted 
Arianism and even paganism — which Constantius had 
persecuted. The immunities of the clergy were restored 
and the grants of public moneys for widows and consecrated 
virgins in the Church renewed. Jovian issued a decree 
condemning to death any who forced these virgins into 
marriage or even proposed marriage to them. Athanasius 
was now the greatest figure in the Church. Julian, after 

1 Hist. Eccl. iv. 1. 

5 



66 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



permitting him to return to Alexandria, had felt his power- 
ful influence thwarting his plans and had banished him as 
"the great foe of the gods." We must distinguish this 
action which was clearly a piece of pagan persecution of 
Christianity from the many Arian attacks directed against 
Athanasius. With the accession of Jovian of course the 
great bishop was free to come back to his post. The 
emperor addressed him a letter of warm admiration, and 
obtained from him a reply setting forth the orthodox 
belief as opposed to Arianism.^ 

Unfortunately this state of things lasted but a very 
short time. Jovian was accidentally killed after only 
reigning eight months, being suffocated when sleeping in a 
room heated with a charcoal brazier.^ He was succeeded 
by a military officer, Yalentinian (a.d. 364), who was both 
orthodox and tolerant. But Valentinian assigned the 
eastern provinces of his empire to Yalens his brother, who 
proved to be a bitter Arian, influenced, as Theodoret ^ says, 
by his wife. In spite of this fact, Yalentinian was able to 
induce Yalens to join him in signing an edict ordering that 
" those who labour in the field of Christ are not to be perse- 
cuted nor oppressed, and that the stewards of the Great 
Euler are not to be driven away." * After this it may strike 
us as surpising that Yalens should have been allowed to 
persecute the Nicene party, and Gibbon endeavours to dis- 
credit the idea that he did so before the death of Yalentinian, 
which occurred in the year A.D. 375.^ But he ventures on 
this doubt in the teeth of the unanimous testimony of the 
Church historians, who agree in describing acts of cruelty, 
including one almost incredibly barbarous crime, as com- 
mitted during the lifetime of the elder brother. The story 
of this outrageous deed is that eighty men — Theodoret says 
" presbyters " — who had come as a deputation to Constanti- 
nople were sent out to sea in an unballasted ship and there 
burnt to death by men who had accompanied them in 

1 Theodoret, iv. 3. 2 Amm. Marc. xxv. x. 12, 13. 

3 Hist. Eccl. iv. 12. Op. cit. iv. 8. 

^ Decline and Fall, chap. xxv. 



THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 



67 



another vessel with orders to execute them in this horrible 
way (A.D. 370V 

Although we may hesitate to believe so amazing a story 
— and it is not easy to accept it even on the positive 
testimony of our authorities — there can be no question as to 
the outrages which were witnessed at Alexandria after the 
death of Valentinian had left the Arians in Valens' half of 
the empire free from all restraint. The pagans were glad 
of an opportunity for uniting forces with any opponents of 
the orthodox Church, and of course the men of the baser 
sort would be only too ready to seize their chance of a 
share in any commotion that was going on. Common 
decency compels us to ascribe to these lower elements of 
the population, the dregs of a dissolute city, doings with 
which no Christian however " heretical " he might be would 
disgrace himself. Thus the mob invaded the church of 
St. Thomas ; a young man in woman's clothing danced on 
the altar ; another young man sat naked in the bishop's 
chair, from which he openly preached immorality to a crowd 
that roared with laughter at what they took to be a fine 
joke; virgins of the Church were stripped, scourged, violated. 
In fact, the recent Bulgarian and Armenian horrors were 
anticipated by the Alexandrian atrocities committed in the 
name of Christian theology. During these troubles an 
attempt was made to seize Athanasius, but once again the 
old man escaped as though by miracle, and this time he 
hid himself in his father's tomb. The best testimony to 
the weight of the great bishop's influence may be seen in the 
fact that even after all this Valens was induced to let 
Athanasius return to his beloved flock. That was the end 
of his wanderings. Although the Arian persecution still 

^ Socrates, iv. 16 j Sozomen, vi. 14 ; Theodoret, iv. 24. None of these 
writers charge Valens with the diabolical device by which the obnoxious 
deputation was got out of the way — evidently from fear of interference from 
the people of Constantinople if the victims were not put beyond the reach of 
rescue. Theodoret ascribes the crime to " the Arians of Constantinople." 
But he is an untrustworthy writer. Both Socrates and Sozomen state that 
the emperor secretly ordered the prefect to put the men to death, and that 
it was this prefect who carried out his master's command in the manner 
described on his own account. 



68 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



raged in other places, henceforth the venerated patriarch 
of Alexandria was able to hold his own without further 
molestation till his death in the year A.D. 373. No hero 
of romance ever passed through more strange adventures 
and hairbreadth escapes. Singled out by four emperors — 
Constantino, Constantius, Julian, and Valens — as a pecu- 
liarly dangerous person, hated with murderous passion by 
the Arian faction, no less than five times driven into exile, 
Athanasius always maintained the affection of his flock, 
and throughout the long oppression was known to all the 
world as the sure champion of the Nicene faith. He may 
not have been so profound a theologian as his contemporary 
Hilary in the West, nor as the Cappadocians of the succeed- 
ing generation in the East ; but undoubtedly he was a very 
great man indeed, of proved integrity, loyal faith, unflinch- 
ing courage, wise statesmanship, large-hearted charity ; the 
supreme hero of his period, and one of the best, truest, 
strongest Christians the world has ever seen. 

Athanasius had lived to see remarkable changes in the 
Arian contention and some modification of the orthodox 
position, although his own position remained firm on the 
ground of the Nicene confession of his youth. Arianism 
split up into several parties each with its own watchword. 
The most important novelty was that of the Semi-Arians, 
who endeavoured to formulate definitely the mediating 
ideas which had appeared at the time of the council of 
Nicsea in the explanations of the creed which Eusebius of 
Csesarea had given his Church. It is not fair to call the 
great historian a Semi- Arian. No party which could bear 
that name was known in his day : he accepted the creed, 
which at a later time the Semi-Arians wished to alter, 
although he explained its test word homoousious in his 
own way, and he lived and died in communion with the 
orthodox Church. The watchword of the Semi-Arians was 
Homoiousios — "like in essence." Gibbon's sarcasm on the 
division of the Church on a diphthong is as shallow as it is 
bitter. The faintest difference in spelhng may involve a 
world-wide difference of meaning. There can be no ques- 



THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD 



69 



tion that with Athanasius homoousious meant identity of 
essence or substance, so that He who came " from the 
essence " ^ of the Father not only resembles the Father but 
is inseparable from the essential being of the Father. Thus 
he says, " We must not imagine three divided substances in 
God, as among men, lest we like the heathen invent a multi- 
plicity of gods, but as the stream is born of the fountain and 
not separate from it although there are two forms and names," 
and asserts the Son's "identity with His own Father." ^ 

A conviction thus deliberately stated is not to be set 
aside by appealing to the unquestionable fact that there 
are instances in which Athanasius uses the word homoomios 
of separate existences in the sense of identity in nature.^ 
It has been asserted that he gave up insisting on his earlier 
rigorous use of the word and would allow any one as orthodox 
who would adopt it even in the sense in which it is em- 
ployed of man and man. But even if that be admitted — 
and Athanasius had no sympathy with verbal pedantry and 
was really anxious for the cause of charity and peace — he 
must not be supposed to have agreed to the Semi-Arian 
position, since he no more accepted the Semi-Arians them- 
selves than the full-fledged Arians. 

Subsequently two other parties emerged. First, the 
extreme Arians stiffened their position and sharpened their 
antitheses against the mediating Semi-Arians. Thus they 
changed their tactics entirely. In the earlier period 
Athanasius had accused them of shiftiness and a vagueness 
of language deliberately chosen in order to throw dust into 
their opponents' eyes. This was their policy at the council 
of Nicaea when they saw themselves in a hopeless minority, 
and the insincerity of it was one of the heaviest accusations 
brought against them by Athanasius in his Orations.* But 
during the Arian ascendancy under Yalens the situation 
was very different, and now the extreme Arians, seeing no 
further need of compromise, went so far as to declare that 



^ iK TTjs ovaias. 2 j\rice7ie Btf. 9 ; cf. Or<Xt, i, 20, 22. 

' e.g. dc Sent. Dionys. 10 ; de Synodis, 51. 
* e.g. Orat. L 8, 31. 



70 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the Son was " unlike " the Father, and thus came to be desig- 
nated " Anomoean." 1 They were also called "Aetian/' after 
Aetius a deacon at Antioch, said to have been very disputa- 
tious in pushing the dry Aristotelian logic that characterised 
Arianism generally to its ultimate issues, and therefore main- 
taining that since the Son was a creature He must be unlike 
the Father, not only in essence, but also in will. Another 
name given to these ultra- Arian Arians was "Eunomian," after 
Eunomius the bishop of Cyzicum, who went even farther, 
discarding all mystery in religion and holding that man can 
know as much of God's nature as God Himself can know. 

Such extravagance led to a revolt of sober minds. The 
court party took a more politic line. Sometimes named 
"Acacians" after Acacius the successor of Eusebius of 
Caesarea^ they maintained a vague and moderate view -nearer 
to that of the great historian, coming between the Semi- 
Arians and the Anomoeans, though in a very different 
temper. They were content to say that the Son was like 
the Father, — and therefore were called " Homoean," ^ — and 
to dispense with further definitions, affecting to fall back on 
Scripture language and condemning the Semi- Arians equally 
with the Nicene bishops for employing an unscriptural 
term. But it was now too late for the plea of conservatism 
with which Arius had tried to win over the simpler country 
pastors at Nicaea. These Homceans were regarded as 
unscrupulous, crafty politicians, who really agreed with 
the extreme Arians, but disavowed them whenever it suited 
their convenience. The existence of such a party in 
influence at court even under Valens is a plain proof that 
the Nicene belief had strong hold of the people as a whole ; 
and the breaking up of Arianism into mutually antagonistic 
factions was a sure sign of its approaching downfall, as it 
was also an evidence that the shot and shell poured in by 
the great orthodox theologians was doing deadly work against 
the Arian positions. These three parties — the Homoiousian, 
the Anomoean, and Homoean — by their mutual antagonisms 
were preparing for the triumph of the Homoousian. 

* dvdfioios. * o/xolos. 



CHAPTER V 



THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 

(a) Nicme and Post-Nicene Fathers, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, 
Gregory of Nyssa ; Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Philo- 
storgius. 

(6) Besides works on the history mentioned in earlier chapters, 
Bright, Age of the Fathers, vol. i., 1903 ; R. Travers Smith, 
St. Basil the Great; Ulmann, Gregorius von Nazianz de Theologe, 
first part of first edit, trans, by Cox ; Newman, Church of 
the Fathers, pp. 116-145 ; Ceilier, Auteurs EccUs., torn. vii. ; 
Tillemont, Memories, ix. ; Dorner, The Person of Christy 
Div. I., vol. ii. ; Ottley, The Incarnation, vol. ii., part v., 
1896 ;.Lietzmann, Apollinaris von Laodicea, 1904. 

The second half of the fourth century is the most brilliant 
period in the theological literature of the Greek Church. 
This fact creates a sore temptation to spend some time in 
the company of its great men rather than to hasten on to 
duller scenes and poorer minds. But the immense field to 
be covered by the present volume compels that act of self- 
denial, and the more so since we are still dealing with the age 
of a united Catholic Church. Nevertheless, not only on their 
own account, but also for the sake of coming to a right 
understanding of the life and thought of later centuries in 
the East, we must have some conception of the teachings 
of the men who did most to shape the orthodoxy which it 
became the business of subsequent generations to defend. 

After Athanasius, who stands apart, the one magnificent 
hero of the first half of the fourth century, the three 
greatest theologians of the orthodox Eastern Church appear 
in the second half of that remarkable century, all of them 
natives of the province of Cappadocia. These are Basil, 

71 



72 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Gregory Nazianzen, and BasiFs brother, Gregory of Nyssa. 
The first two were highly educated in the university culture 
of their day ; and, although Gregory of Nyssa was privately 
trained by Basil, he was even more well-read in classical 
literature. In these leaders of the Church, therefore, we 
see men endowed with a first-class liberal education bring- 
ing to bear on the problems of theology knowledge of the 
best things that have been said and done during past ages 
in the large outer world. In this respect we may compare 
them with the Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, a century 
and a half before, or with such men of the " New Learn- 
ing " among the Eeformers as Erasmus and Melanchthon. 
Of these three Basil was the most prominent in his own 
day, since he was a man of affairs as well as a scholar and 
writer, energetic, courageous, masterful. He was born at 
Csesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, in the year 329. 
Having distinguished himself at school in his native town, 
he was sent by his father to study at Constantinople and 
perhaps at Antioch under Libanius — the famous lecturer so 
much admired by Julian.^ After this he went to the 
university of Athens, then the intellectual centre of the 
civilised world, and there began his life-long friendship 
with Gregory Nazianzen, the two spending some years 
together in the delightful atmosphere of rich scholar- 
ship and refined thinking which was so congenial to both 
of them. Here too Basil met the future Emperor Julian and 
became intimate with that eager student on their common 
ground of intellectual interests. Flushed with the scholar's 
fame he had returned to Caesarea, apparently as yet having 
no perception of his great mission, when his sister Macrina 
turned his thoughts to the higher aims, and he was baptised. 
Then he determined to devote himself to the ascetic hfe, 
and appointed a baihff for his estate — for he was a wealthy 
landowner and always behaved hke an aristocrat. Basil 

1 Socrates, iv. 26 ; Sozomen, vi. 17. But a doubt has been raised on this 
point, and it has been suggested that his namesake, a friend of Chrysostom, 
may be confused by the historians with Basil of Csesarea. See Blomfield 
Jackson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. xiii. p. xv. 



THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 



73 



spent five years in the desert of Pontus, where he founded 
monastic establishments. He slept in a hair shirt, he had 
but one meal a day, and he Hved only on a vegetable diet. 
The sun was his only fire. His constitution was not 
robust ; and on one occasion, when the governor of Pontus 
threatened to tear out his liver, Basil replied, " Thanks 
for your intention ; where it is at present it has been 
no slight annoyance." 

Basil's monasteries were schools of Mcene orthodoxy, 
at which the clergy who had been banished from their 
churches took refuge and trained up a generation of men 
faithful to the oppressed faith, and Basil himself was 
indefatigable in labouring for its restoration. It seemed as 
though the mantle of Athanasius had fallen on his shoulders. 
Throughout the East he was recognised as the champion of 
the Nicene cause. At length some Church troubles led his 
friend Gregory to urge his recall, and on the death of the 
bishop he was elected to the bishopric of Csesarea (a.d. 370). 

Basil's commanding character was now felt most power- 
fully all over Syria and Asia Minor. When the prefect 
Modestus proposed to the bishops of his district the 
alternatives of Arianism or deprivation in accordance with 
the orders of the emperor Valens, he came to Basil and 
urged him to yield to the will of his " Sovereign." " I have 
a sovereign," he answered, "whose will is otherwise, nor 
can I bring myself to worship any creature " (alluding to 
the Arian Christ). The prefect threatened confiscation, 
exile, torture. " Think of some other threat," was 
the fearless man's reply ; " these have no influence on me." 
Modestus was constrained to respect the great bishop's 
firmness, and he appealed to the emperor, who soon after 
visited Csesarea, where, awed by the presence of Basil — 
the old writers add, by the miracles he wrought — he was 
generous enough to dismiss the bishop and his friends with- 
out punishment. Basil did not live to see the restoration 
of the Nicene faith. He died in the year 379. 

The principal extant works of Basil consist of homilies 
entitled Hexcemeron, on the six days of creation ; five books 



74 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Against Eunomius, the extreme Arian, the last two of which 
are sometimes regarded as by another hand ; an important 
work upon the Holy Spirit; Letters, which give a vivid 
picture of the writer's life and its surroundings ; various 
ascetic works and sermons. The "Liturgy of St. Basil" 
and the " Liturgy of St. Chrysostom " subsequently used in 
the East were in all probability both based on an older 
liturgy that Basil used and gave to his clergy. 

In defending the Nicene position Basil developed a 
new terminology which we may take as indicating some 
change of view. With Athanasius there is in God one ousia ^ 
(essence) or hypostasis'^ (substance), the two words being 
synonymous. But, according to Basil, while there is one 
ousia, there are three hypostases ; and in this change of 
terminology the two Gregories agree, so that under the 
influence of the Cappadocian theologians it passes over into 
the language of the Greek Church. Meanwhile in the Latin 
Church there was no change of usage. Here it was taught 
all along that in the Trinity there was one substantia 
existing in three personce.^ But the Latin Church used 
the word siibstantia as equivalent to both the Greek words 
ousia and hypostasis. Thus the East saw three hypostases 
in the Trinity, but the West only one. The difference 
however was not so great as it appeared to be on the 
surface. The Greeks had no word equivalent to the Latin 
persona which they could use with safety, because the nearest 
corresponding term, prosopon^ was already appropriated in 
a Sabellian sense for a mere phase or aspect of God without 
any real distinction of person. Since the Arians were con- 
stantly charging the Nicene party with Sabellianism, it 
would never have done to adopt so suspicious a word. 
Accordingly a new term had to be found for what the 
West regarded as the personm, literally the " characters " 
(as the word is used in a drama) of the Trinity, and 

* ovala. ^ vir6<TTa<ni. 

' It has been suggested that the great test word was of Latin origin — 
6fioo6(nov being a translation of unius substantice — an improbable hypothesis. 

* vpoauirov. 



THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 



75 



hypostasis was taken over for this purpose. Nevertheless 
the change was more than verbal. Basil treated the differ- 
ence between ousia and hypostasis as equivalent to that 
between common and proper nouns, as between " man " 
and " Peter, Paul, John, or James/* ^ When it was 
objected that the term homoousios implied a kind of 
division and distribution of a previously existing sub- 
stance, Basil replied, " The idea might have some applica- 
tion to brass and coins made of it ; but in the case of 
the Father and of the Son the substance of one is not 
older than that of the other, neither can it be conceived 
as superimposed on both." ^ We must remember that the 
orthodox Greek theologians were Platonic in their spirit 
and thought, so that to them the idea corresponding to a 
general term was a high reality. Nevertheless, language 
such as this reveals a growing tendency to emphasise the 
numerical distinction between the persons in the Trinity. 
Surely Harnack goes too far when he regards this as 
virtually the adoption of the Semi-Arian position,^ for the 
firm adhesion to the unity of the substance (the ousia) 
seems to preclude that amazing conclusion. But un- 
doubtedly some approach to it was made, perhaps in 
part owing to the fact that most of the Semi-Arians were 
coming over to the orthodox Church. The final result was 
that without any formal divergence of doctrine, while in 
the West the emphasis was always laid on the unity of 
the Godhead, in the East it came to be put more on the 
division of the persons. 

Gregory Nazianzen was in some respects the opposite, 
or the complement, to his friend Basil in nature and disposi- 
tion. An indefatigable student, retiring and unambitious, 
he would never have come out into a position of responsi- 
bility if this course had not been forced upon him, or at 
all events reluctantly accepted by him under a strong sense 
of duty. He was born in the year 325, or a little later, 
at Nazianzus in Cappadocia, where his father, the elder 

1 Letter 38. 2 Letter 52. 

• History of Dogma, Eng. Trans. , vol. i v. p. 82, 



76 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Gregory was bishop, honourably illustrating as late as the 
fourth century the right of bishops to live in the married 
state. He appears to have first met Basil at Csesarea, where 
he had been sent to school. The schoolboy attachment 
ripened into a life-long friendship. Afterwards studying 
at Csesarea in Palestine, and then at Alexandria, he came 
on at length to the great university of Athens, where he 
found Basil already winning a brilliant reputation for 
scholarship. In his funeral oration over his friend he 
gives a vivid account of university life at the classic 
centre of culture during the fourth century. Theatres, 
wine parties, frivolous discussions dissipated the time and 
energies of fashionable students. But the two Cappa- 
docians had come to work, and sternly avoiding all these 
distractions, they gave themselves to severe study. Gregory 
stayed on longer than his friend, apparently for twelve years 
altogether, from the age of eighteen till he was past thirty. 
At last, fascinated by the attractions of the devotional life, 
he joined Basil for a short time in his Pontic retreat. 

In the year 360 Gregory returned home, probably to 
assist his father. Much against his will, but at the urgent 
wish of the people of Nazianzus, his father ordained him 
presbyter. It was " good form " to appear reluctant to take 
office in the Church ; but evidently Gregory's shrinking from 
the responsibility was genuine ; he even described his ordina- 
tion as an act of tyranny, and immediately after fled to his 
old retreat with Basil. His Defence of his Flight to Pontus 
— his first sermon after his return — sets forth the loftiest 
ideal of the Christian ministry with a richness of thought 
and a passionate earnestness of feeling that make this book 
live to-day as truly as Baxter's Reformed Pastor — a work on 
similar lines. But he could not long resist the call of duty. 
Subsequently Basil forced him to the episcopate of a little 
posting-station named Sasima, a noisy, dusty village of one 
narrow street with no grass or trees in its neighbourhood. 
The masterful Basil did this for the benefit of his friend's 
soul, as a discipline in submission and humility — an action 
the merit of which was not highly appreciated by its victim. 



THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 77 



After an obscure time at Seleucia in Isauria he was dragged 
out into the glare of day by being appointed to the charge 
of the one orthodox Church at Constantinople, when the 
Arian tyranny was at its height. There he preached his 
famous Fim Theological Orations, which placed him in the 
foremost rank of Christian preachers ; they are not un- 
worthy of comparison with the utterances of the classic 
Greek orators. His sermons are his greatest works ; after 
them his letters and his poems claim our interest. 

On the accession of Theodosius, Gregory was rewarded 
for his fidelity in holding the fort during the Arian period by 
being made patriarch of Constantinople. In virtue of this 
fact he presided at some of the sessions of the council that 
assembled in that city in the year 381, till, feeling unequal 
to the distasteful task of maintaining order amid the wrang- 
ling of the bishops, he retired to his home at Nazianzus, 
although according to Socrates ^ he had " surpassed all his 
contemporaries in eloquence and piety." 

Gregory defended the Nicene position, as held by himself 
and Basil, by elaborating the mysterious connection of unity 
and threefoldness in the Trinity. He explained that the 
unity of the " monarchy " ^ consisted in " common dignity ^ 
of the essence," " harmony of sentiment," * " identity of 
motion," ^ and " inclination " ^ of the Son and the Spirit 
towards the Father. How striking, even startling, are 
these various expressions, one and all indicating the dis- 
tinctions of individuality in the Trinity even when toiling 
to find means to express the idea of the unity — so char- 
acteristic of the later development of the Nicene theology, 
so different from the attitude of the Western Church ! 
Only the underlying Platonism can save such language 
from a charge of tritheism. But the unity is really found 
in the idea of derivation. The Son and Spirit are twin 
rays from one light and that by an eternally continuous 
process. 

The third of the great Cappadocians was Basil's 

* Hist. Eccl. V. 7. ^ /lovapxia. ' duorifila. 



78 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



younger brother Gregory of Nyssa, who was born about 
A.D. 335 or 336. Owing to the delicacy of his health he 
enjoyed none of the university advantages that fell to the 
lot of Basil and Gregory Nazianzen. He was privately 
educated by his brother Basil, and he became a great 
reader on his own account. After this it is significant 
that he proved to be a much more original thinker than 
either of the two highly-tutored senior members of the 
famous trio. Basil appointed him bishop of the little 
town of Nyssa (now Nirse) in the west of Cappadocia. 
During the Arian persecution under Valens he was driven 
from his church on a charge of irregularity of appointment 
by a too subservient synod held at Nyssa, and then banished 
by the emperor, to be restored after the death of Valens 
and " the crash of Hadrianople." On the death of Basil 
he became one of the two leading defenders of the faith. 

Gregory of Nyssa is chiefly interesting to us on 
account of the profound arguments and daring speculations 
with which he justified the orthodox view against the 
Arians. These are elaborated in his great work Against 
Eunomius, as well as in some of his shorter writings. 
The Nicene fathers had simply thundered out a great 
affirmation — strong, definite, conclusive — still only an 
affirmation, a bare assertion voted by authority. Even 
Athanasius was content for the most part to defend it by 
rebutting false conceptions while tearing the rival theory 
to shreds. Gregory of Nyssa goes further. He digs into 
the roots of the mighty affirmation ; he seeks to justify 
it metaphysically ; he carries orthodox theology into the 
free atmosphere of philosophy and there attempts to argue 
for its truth on principles of abstract reason — a daring, a 
perilous effort, but still one that some minds not satisfied 
with authoritative dogma might welcome with a sense of 
liberty and enlargement. In particular, Gregory helped 
to develop a new line of thought that opened up fruitful 
sources of discussion among subsequent writers. Hitherto 
the nature of Christ had been almost exclusively con- 
sidered on its Divine side. The one question had been, 



THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 



79 



How did He stand related to God ? The orthodox were 
content to affirm His full Divinity and also to assert the 
fact of the incarnation ; but they made no attempt to 
correlate these two truths. They had no theory as to 
how the Divine and the human could subsist together, 
how there could be such a fact as an incarnation at all. 
The full discussion of this most difficult problem belongs 
to the controversies of later times — those of the fifth and 
sixth centuries. But before the end of the fourth century 
there had emerged a burning question as to the actual 
presence of complete human and Divine natures in the 
Person of Jesus Christ. Now both the Gregories, but 
Gregory of Nyssa the more emphatically of the two, fol- 
lowed Origen in pronouncing for a real human soul in 
Christ. According to Gregory of Nyssa, this was trans- 
formed under the influence of the Divine Nature after the 
resurrection and ascension. The very body of Christ was 
then sublimated into the essence of the Divine Nature, so 
that it has laid aside the attributes of gravity, shape, colour, 
and all limitation. Thus we have the omnipresence of that 
glorified body, for the body of Christ was transmute to the 
flesh of God by the indwelling word.^ It is easy to see 
how readily such a theory would agree with the doctrine 
of transubstantiation, a doctrine which Gregory did more 
than anybody else of his period to advance.^ 

On the other hand, Apollinaris the younger, of Hier- 
apolis, took the opposite line. A man of great intellectual 
power, he made an original attempt to shape an intelligible 
conception of the incarnation. But by aboHshing its 
mystery he virtually denied the fact. His motif was 
opposition to Arianism. Nevertheless, he shared with 
Arius a view which the Church always rejected as false 
and fatal to the central idea of the gospel, the coming 
of the Divine into the human ; for he too denied to Christ 
a complete human nature. Like Arius, he was Aristotelian 
in temper of mind and method of thought. His clear, 

^ Oratio catechetica magna, 37. 

2 See Hebert, The Lord's Supper, vol. i. pp. 202-209. 



80 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



crisp logic worked out definite conclusions without regard 
to side issues. Accepting the tripartite division of man 
into body or flesh, soul, and mind or spirit,^ he ascribed 
to our Lord only the first two, and taught that the spirit 
or higher consciousness of Christ was purely of Divine 
Nature, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity. 
He thought that you must sacrifice the personality on one 
side or the other. Paul of Samosata had sacrificed it on 
the Divine side ; with him Christ was only a man com- 
pletely influenced by God, the ego, the centre of personality 
and self-consciousness being human. To allow of two 
spirits or minds is to admit two wills — which the Chui'ch 
did actually admit and even affirm on peril of excommuni- 
cation at a later time, — and so two persons. Then the 
human mind ^ is naturally changeable, owing to its posses- 
sion of free will; but to say that Christ was changeable 
was Arian, the Mcene party denying this. Further, 
ApoUinaris thought that the usual way of representing 
the nature of Christ was inconsistent with the doctrine 
of redemption, since it only allowed the man Jesus, not 
the Divine Christ, to have suffered for us. 

Apollinaris was vehemently assailed for the denial of 
the incarnation these ideas were supposed to involve. But 
he endeavoured to save that mystery in another region. 
Since man was made in the image of God, there must be 
something in God which is like man. In other words, there 
must be an inherent humanity in God. Now it was that 
man-like element in God which entered into earthly human 
nature in the incarnation of Jesus. Therefore it would 
exactly correspond to a perfect human spirit. We might 
compare this view to the Semi- Arian, by applying to the 
human nature of Christ the watchword that the Semi- 
Arians used to describe His Divine Nature, and say that, 
while the Athanasian party regarded Christ as homoousios 
with us in His humanity, Apolhnaris considered Him to 
be only homoiousios with us. It will be found that most 

* The Greek aufia, vov% ; the New Testament o-d/j^, ^ux??, Tvevju-a. 



THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 81 



subsequent approaches to an explanation — over and above 
the mere orthodox affirmation — of the incarnation have 
moved in the direction here indicated by Apollinaris ; they 
have denied the existence of the enormous gulf commonly 
thought to separate human nature from God, and they 
have asserted a natural affinity between God and man, a 
something in us that is akin to God, and therefore corre- 
latively a something in God that is akin to us. Some 
zealous opponents of Arianism were driven by the recoil 
of their attack on the heresy back on the Sabellianism 
that Arius had originally set out to resist. Thus they 
played into the hands of their opponents, who could turn 
round on the Nicene party saying, " There ; that is just 
what we told you — you are Sabellian." Marcellus of 
Ancyra was one of these too thoroughgoing champions of 
the homoousion doctrine. He was a friend of Athanasius, 
who long defended him from the suspicion of Sabellianism ; 
but when at last his position became too clear to be 
doubted, the great patriarch was driven to correct him.^ 
Still more pronounced was the Sabellianism of his disciple 
Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, who was condemned in a 
synod at that city. 

Meanwhile the Arians were pushing their views to a 
logical conclusion with regard to the whole conception of 
the Trinity. At first only the doctrine of the nature of 
Christ was in question. But the enquiry could not stop 
there. The notions we entertain concerning the second 
Person of the Trinity must affect our ideas of the third. 
If the Son is a creature, it will be impossible not to assert 
that the Spirit also is a creature. Athanasius met with 
this view when in exile in the Thebaid, coming across 
Arians who went beyond Arius in asserting that the Holy 
Spirit was not only a creature but " one of the ministering 
spirits " ; 2 he says they were called Figuraturists, and 
Fighters against the Spirit.^ Probably not much would 

^ Oration against the Arians, iv. 

^ Koi tCjv irvevixaTCbv XeiTovpyiKQv iv airb etvai, Letters to Serapion, 4. 
• TpoircKoL, Trv€ViJ.(XTOfxaxovvTes. 

6 



82 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



have been heard of this by-product of Ariaiiism — since the 
battle was raging round the doctrine of Christ — if it had 
not succeeded in obtaining a champion in high quarters. 
Macedonius the patriarch of Constantinople maintained 
the same position, and consequently the party who agreed 
with him was known as Macedonian. Since this consisted 
largely of Semi-Arians, unlikely as we might have supposed 
it, the orthodox were quick to seize the new weapon, and 
call all the Semi-Arians Macedonians. But that was not 
just. 

With this babel of voices from Eunomians, Acacians, 
Semi-Arians, Macedonians, Apollinarians, followers of Mar- 
cellus and Photinus, rending the air, all more or less opposed 
to the party of the three Cappadocians in then: support of 
the Nicene position, there seemed to be an urgent need for 
another general council of the Church to settle the various 
disputes involved. Accordingly, Theodosius summoned a 
synod of the Eastern bishops at Constantinople. This 
synod is reckoned to be the second (Ecumenical Council, 
none of the councils — at Tyre, Constantinople, Antioch, 
Sardica, Sirmium, Eimini — which had met in the interval 
since Nicsea, being regarded as of that character. And 
yet even this council at Constantinople only represented 
the Eastern half of the Church. Not a bishop from the 
West was present. Theodosius only ruled over the Eastern 
branch of the empire, and he was only able to command 
the bishops within the area of his jurisdiction. The sole 
justification for regarding the council as oecumenical is the 
fact that its decisions were accepted by the bishop of 
Eome and the Church of the West. This council first 
assembled in the year a.d. 381 ; then it broke up for a 
time. It reassembled the next year. There were 150 
bishops present. The first president was Meletius of 
Antioch ; but he died during the discussions and was suc- 
ceeded by Gregory Nazianzen, who, as we have seen,^ 
retired because he felt out of his element among the 
wrangling, quarrelsome theologians, and his place was then 

ip. 77. 



THE CAPPADOCIAN THEOLOGIANS 83 



taken by Nectarius, his successor in the patriarchate of 
Constantinople. The council reaffirmed the Greed of Nicsea 
and anathematised Eunomians, Semi-Arians or Pneuma- 
tomachoi, Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians, Apollinarians. 
Our " Mcene Creed," which differs slightly from the creed 
as it was originally shaped at Nicsea, has been long regarded 
as the " Creed of Constantinople." But that view is now 
abandoned by scholars for the following reasons : The creed 
omits strong anti-Arian expressions,^ an omission that would 
be unaccountable at this council, since the council's raison 
d'Mre was to stiffen up orthodoxy against Arianism ; it was in 
existence previous to the assembling of the council, since it 
was mentioned by Epiphanius at an earlier date ; it is almost 
identical with the creed of Cyril of Jerusalem ; for two 
hundred years after the council of Constantinople nobody 
is found connecting it with that council ; we know that 
the council reaffirmed the Creed of Nicaea. Possibly Cyril 
— who was present — read his creed to the council and got 
an endorsement of it as a creed he might use in his own 
church, and if so this fact may have originated the 
legend.^ 

Meanwhile the one important conclusion of the 
council was simply the reassertion of the Nicene position,, 
together with an explicit repudiation of whatever more 
recent schemes and speculations were deemed inconsistent 
with it. Some advance of thought may be seen in the 
three Cappadocians, especially in Gregory of Nyssa ; and a 
very original attempt to break up new ground and carry 
theological ideas further forward in explanation of the 
incarnation is to be acknowledged in ApoUinaris. But 
the latter is denounced as a heretic, and even Basil and 
the Gregories have only been utilised in defence of the 
established position. Gregory of Nyssa, the most original 
thinker of the trio, comes to be regarded with some sus- 
picion on account of his sympathy with Origen's uni- 
versalism. The council thinks it can do nothing better 

TQVT ecrriu iK ttjs ovcrias tou Tarpbs and Oebv iK deov. 
^ See Hort, Two Dissertations. 



84 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



than fall back on the decision of "the 318," now fifty- 
six years old, and treated with growing veneration as an 
inspired oracle. That decision was to be the stamp and 
seal of orthodoxy for all time. There remained to do 
nothing more in the matter than to safeguard it against 
the attacks of heresy, which in the meantime had risen up 
to assail it on all sides. Already the keynote of Eastern 
Christianity was sounded. This was to be orthodoxy — 
fixed, settled dogma, with no encouragement for widening 
views or the exploration of new realms of truth. 

Having determined this point, the council only had to 
proceed to certain practical decisions in its later canons. 
The object of one of these was to confine a bishop's 
authority to his own district. Another, the third, declared 
that " the bishop of Constantinople shall have the privi- 
lege of rank next after the bishop of Eome ; because 
Constantinople is new Eome"^ — a decision of great sig- 
nificance in view of the subsequent division of the Church. 

^ T^j* iJiAv TOL KojpaTaPTivovirdXecas iirl<TKOirov ix^cv ra irpea^eia rrjs Ti/irjs 
fierd. Thv t^s *Pc6/ti7J iirla^KOTrov, 5iA rb etvai airrju viav 'FibfiTjv. Observe 
the preposition — fierh, and note the reason for the position — a wholly- 
political reason, and therefore thoroughly characteristic of the Greek 
Church. 



CHAPTEE VI 



THE MOVEMENTS THAT LED TO THE COUNCIL OF 
CHALCEDON (A.D. 382-445) 

(a) The Church historians — Socrates (to a.d. 439), Sozomen (to 
A.D. 439) ; Theodoret (to a.d. 429), Evagrius (to a.d. 594). 
The pagan historian Zosimiis (to a.d. 410). Nicene and Post- 
Nicene Fathers, " Chrysostom." 

(6) Hefele, History of the Councils, Eng. Trans., vol. ii., 1876 ; 
Bright, Age of the Fathers, vol. ii., 1903 ; Stephens, Life of 
Chrysostom, 1872 ; Dorner, Person of Christy Div. ii. vol. i. ; 
Ottley, The Incarnation^ part vi., 1896 ; Loofs, Nestoriana. 

With the tragic death of Valens and the accession of 
Gratian in the West and Theodosius in the East the long 
Arian tyranny comes to an end. Here then a new 
chapter opens in the history of the Eastern Church. 
Theodosius was more generous in conduct and more liberal 
in ideas than either his enemies have been willing to admit 
in the one case or his friends in the other. One frightful 
outbreak of his fiery Spanish temper has left an indelible 
stain on the emperor's memory in spite of the humble 
penance to which he afterwards submitted. Hearing of a 
riot at Thessalonica in which a general and other officers 
of the army had been killed by the populace, who were 
indignant at the punishment of a favourite charioteer, 
although ' this had been on account of a vile crime, 
Theodosius flew into a rage, ordered the citizens to be 
invited to the hippodrome as for an expected race, and 
set his soldiers on to an indiscriminate slaughter, which 
resulted in a massacre of 5000 men, women, and children. 
Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, after writing to the emperor 
to express his horror of the crime, though in courteous 

86 



86 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



terms, stood at the door of his church when Theodosius 
presented himself for the Christmas festival, and would not 
permit his entrance till some time after he had humbled 
himself and confessed his guilt. It was an unheard of 
act of daring. We may note that it took place in the 
independent West, not in the obsequious East, and further 
that it was the deed of one who had the most exalted idea 
of the duties of the episcopate, and who held a very high 
place in the estimation of his people. For all that, although 
the dramatic event is often quoted as an indication of the 
growing power of the Church in its age-long conflict with 
the empire, in so personal a case as this much must be set 
down to the character of the sovereign who could thus 
humble himself in owning his wrong-doing before a minister 
of religion, like David when accused by Nathan. It was 
very different from the Norman Henry ii. doing penance 
at the shrine of Becket in superstitious terror and more 
practical alarm of insurrection. 

In his ecclesiastical policy Theodosius ruthlessly 
expelled Arian bishops, treating them about as badly as 
his predecessor had treated the Nicene clergy. They would 
see that they were just paid in their own coin ; and it was 
only what everybody expected. The emperor's measures 
against paganism have been misunderstood and their severity 
has been exaggerated. It is true that much happened 
during the reign of Theodosius to bring the tottering, 
crumbling fabric of the cult of the old gods to the ground. 
The failure of Julian's fanatical attempt at resuscitation 
combined with reformation was a plain proof that its days 
were over. It was like the case of Monasticism in the 
reign of Henry viii. ; the passing away of the anachronism 
was inevitable. From the days of Constantius laws against 
sacrificing had been inscribed in the statute book; but, 
except with reference to magic — which people dreaded, the 
demons being reckoned dangerous — and obscene ceremonies, 
against which the growing sense of decency in a Christian 
community revolted, these laws had not been executed. 
Theodosius put the already existing and acknowledged laws 



MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 87 

in force. No statute of Theoclosius ordered the destruction 
of temples — he was no vandal. The demolition went on 
merrily in some districts, but as the result of popular 
violence, which however found encouragement in the 
known fact of the emperor's activity in repressing pagan 
rites. 

It was in this way that the destruction of the famous 
Serapeum at Alexandria was brought about, although 
Socrates states that "at the solicitation of Theophilus, 
bishop of Alexandria, the emperor issued an order at this 
time for the demolition of the heathen temples in that 
city ; commanding also that it should be put in execution 
under the direction of Theophilus, which occasioned a great 
commotion." ^ First we see the temple of Mithra cleared 
out and its abhorrent contents exposed to view. That 
was not an instance of temple demolition ; the building was 
not destroyed. But in the case of the Serapeum, inasmuch 
as the pagan party was using it as their fortress, a riotous 
attack was made on it by the mob led by the monks, the 
image of Serapis was hacked to pieces, and the temple itself 
pulled to the ground. This act of violence provoked a 
counter movement from the pagan section of the population, 
and the result was a street fight in which many lives 
were lost. Socrates states that most of the victims were 
Christians, it being found afterwards that very few heathen 
were killed. We may gather from this fact that the pagan 
element in the city was still strong — at least in its anti- 
Christian activity, although it did not show much energy in 
support of its own religious rites. Other temples in Egypt 
and elsewhere were destroyed, probably in similar popular 
tumults, and nobody was punished by the government. 
Still, Theodosius himself had wished the buildings to be 
preserved and used as government offices. 

Theodosius did not confine the distribution of offices to 
Christians ; he granted them to pagans when he saw merit. 
Thus he appointed Symmachus consul and the rhetorician 
Themistius prefect of Constantinople and even tutor to his 

^ Hist. Ecd. V. 16. 



88 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



son Arcadius — although both of them were pagans. Alto- 
gether it may be concluded that, while he did not restrain 
the growing popular violence directed against the buildings 
and images of pagan worship, and even took action to 
suppress the ritual, he bore no grudge against persons 
and was quite ready to appreciate the good qualities of 
adherents of the old religions. The empire which had 
been united for a time was divided at his death (a.d. 395) 
between his two weak sons, Honorius in the West and 
Arcadius in the East. The latter was a puppet in the 
hands of his unscrupulous minister Eutropius, who induced 
him to marry a beautiful Frank maiden Eudoxia. 

Meanwhile the one really great man in the Eastern 
Church was being brought into public notice as much by 
his stern fidelity as by his unparalleled pulpit gifts. This 
was John, first known as a presbyter at Antioch and always 
described by this simple name during his lifetime, but now 
recognised by his posthumous title, Chrysostom. Antioch 
was the seat of a school of Bible study, the method of which 
was very different from that cultivated at Alexandria. 
Following the example of the grammarians in their treat- 
ment of Homer and of Philo in his adaptation of the Old 
Testament to current philosophical ideas, the Alexandrian 
Christian scholars took great liberties with the Scriptures — 
the New Testament as well as the Old — in freely allegoris- 
ing them. The scholars of Antioch, on the other hand, 
pursued the method of grammatical and historical interpreta- 
tion. For this reason, while we are often amused at the 
ingenuity of the Alexandrian interpretations of the Bible, 
we find Antiochian expositions of permanent value as guides 
to a correct understanding of Scripture. No commentator 
is of more use in this respect than Chrysostom. He is 
the prince of expository preachers. The modern expositor 
is a debtor to the great presbyter of Antioch for many 
suggestive ideas which he thinks he owes to Westcott, 
Lightfoot, Alford, or Matthew Henry, but which if he had 
the patience to trace the stream up to its source he would 
see to have sprung from the sound perceptions of Chrysostom. 



MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 89 



It must have been an age of Bible reading, at least in that 
chief centre of Bible study, Antioch ; for Chrysostom assumes 
a knowledge of Scripture on the part of his hearers which 
few preachers of the present day would venture to take for 
granted in their congregations. 

It was a crisis in the fate of his city that brought 
Chrysostom to the front as the greatest preacher of his age, 
perhaps of any age. There had been a riot, springing from 
popular irritation at the emperor's demand for a large 
contribution from Antioch towards a largesse for the army, 
in which the statues of the emperor and empress were 
destroyed. No sooner was this mad freak over than its 
perpetrators repented of their folly. In the despotic East 
the emperor and empress were flattered with almost divine 
honours and their statues treated with some approach to 
the veneration that the pagans professed for the images of 
their gods, that is to say, they were political idols, to insult 
which was more than treason, almost sacrilege. This was 
during the reign of Theodosius, whose hot temper and 
the ruthless vengeance he did not scruple to wreak on those 
who offended him were well known — though the incident was 
earlier than the massacre of Thessalonica. The reaction 
was appalling. The people were simply numb with horror. 
Then the old bishop Flavian set out on a journey across 
the mountains in the snows of winter to plead for his flock 
with the emperor, who could not but be justly offended. 
Happily, his mission was successful, and he was able to 
return with a pardon to be received by the city of Antioch 
on certain conditions that were not unreasonable. Mean- 
while the people sat terror-stricken, awaiting the verdict on 
their crime and anticipating the worst. Then Chrysostom 
seized the opportunity to conduct a mission. Every day 
his church was thronged, while the preacher denounced the 
luxuries and lashed the vices of his fellow-citizens. Like 
Savonarola at Florence he daringly attacked popular sins, 
directly accusing the trembling people who stood spellbound 
under the scathing torrent of eloquence. The result was a 
revival of religion in the dissolute city. 



90 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



In the year 397 the death of Nectarius, who had been 
patriarch of Constantinople for the previous sixteen years, 
left the most important post in the Eastern Church vacant. 
It shows the good sense of the imperial minister Eutropius, 
worthless man as he was, that this de facto ruler persuaded 
his master to assign the episcopate to Chrysostom. Then, 
focussed in the blaze of publicity at the imperial capital, 
the wonderful preacher more than justified the discern- 
ment which had led to his appointment. The influence 
which he exerted from the cathedral pulpit excelled that 
of the court. Short in stature, unsociable in manners, 
living the life of a recluse in the patriarch's lordly palace, 
and so disappointing those who had enjoyed the princely 
hospitality of his predecessor, Chrysostom swayed the 
people of Constantinople as he chose, by the magic of his 
eloquence. Yet he was no flatterer of common habits and 
notions. He proved how the supremely great preacher 
can win the confidence of his congregation without ever 
stooping to the arts of popularity. Chrysostom was a 
John the Baptist in his stern denunciation of prevalent 
evils among all circles of society up to the very highest. He 
even anticipated the rude daring of John Knox in com- 
paring the empress to J ezebel — and that at Constantinople, 
the city of subservient prelates. At the same time he was 
both just and generous, and it was his large-hearted sense 
of fairness that led to his first troubles in the city. The 
occasion was the attack on the teachings of Origen that 
was then being promoted by the narrower-minded monks. 

The story is complicated. The most vehement 
opponents of Origenism were too ignorant to understand 
the teaching they decried. These men who came from 
the desert cells of Egypt were known as Anthropomorphists 
from their grossly materiahstic conception of God as 
possessing a human body with physical features like our 
own, so that the Scripture references to His eyes, ears, 
hands, and feet were to be taken literally. When one of 
these simple souls was shown the error of such a notion, 
he exclaimed with tears, "They have taken away my 



MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 91 

Lord, and I know not where they have laid him." How 
could such people understand the profound ideas of the 
philosophic Origen ? Unfortunately they regarded the spirit 
of Origen as the chief opponent of their own views, and it 
was in self-defence that they promoted the anti-Origen 
agitation. The movement swelled to dangerous dimensions, 
till Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, who at first 
had opposed it, swung round, from fear or policy, and 
threw the aegis of his protection over it. Meanwhile 
the more spiritual monks were strongly opposed to this 
literalism, and the opposition was led by four old men in 
the Nitrian desert who were known as the " tall brothers " 
from their remarkable stature. Theophilus attacked these 
men, and they fled to Palestine and ultimately to Con- 
stantinople, where they sought the intercession of 
Chrysostom. The large - hearted patriarch would not 
undertake to judge the case ; but he wrote to Theophilus 
begging the Alexandrian patriarch to receive the old men 
back. This brought into the field the ever - recurring 
jealousy betw^een Alexandria and the upstart imperial city 
of Constantinople. Theophilus charged Chrysostom with 
interfering with a matter that was not within his juris- 
diction. Then the emperor was persuaded to summon 
Theophilus to Constantinople. He came, but at his own 
pace and gathering adherents on the road, so that when 
he presented himself he was strong enough to hold a 
council in a suburb of Chalcedon called " the Oak," at 
which Chrysostom was condemned and deposed on the 
ground of a number of frivolous charges. But the rage 
of the people and an earthquake which alarmed Eudoxia, 
who took it for a supernatural portent, led the empress 
to persuade her husband to recall the patriarch. He was 
received back with wild joy, led into his church by his 
people, and compelled to preach to them there and then. 
This uncanonical act of resuming his ministerial office 
after deposition was made a ground of accusation against 
Chrysostom when he was again out of favour with the 
court. It was Uke the charge against Athanasius when 



92 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



he returned to Alexandria on the invitation of the civil 
government after deposition by a Church council at Tyre. 
But in both cases the defence was really unanswerable. 
The condemning synods were not fairly representative, and 
they had no jurisdiction over the bishops they presumed 
to depose. 

Chrysostom's second offence was final. A silver image 
of Eudoxia had been set up opposite his church and the 
inauguration of it was celebrated with dances and 
buffoonery, which the patriarch detested as morally 
pernicious. He vehemently denounced the whole of the 
proceedings, an action which of course mortally offended 
the empress. There is extant a sermon attributed to 
Chrysostom on this occasion, beginning with the sentence, 
" Again Herodias is raging, again she is excited, again she 
is dancing, again she is seeking to obtain the head of J ohn." 
The sermon as it stands is spurious, and Gibbon thought 
that this celebrated sentence in particular was certainly 
an invention ; but the preacher who could call a woman 
" Jezebel " on one occasion might be imagined when more 
provoked on a later occasion to have designated her 
"Herodias." At all events, Chrysostom's offence was 
unpardonable. For a time he remained in seclusion at 
Constantinople, twice escaping assassination, while the city 
was in a great state of commotion. Then he was banished, 
a synod condemning him for having resumed his office 
without ecclesiastical permission since the synod of the 
Oak had deposed him. After three years of exile the 
hardships he had endured hastened his death (Sept. 14, 
407). 

Passing on now to the Christological controversies 
which followed the formal settlement of the Arian disputes 
at the council of Constantinople, we notice two opposite 
tendencies of thought, each of which had to be guarded 
against by those who would keep to the ever sharpening 
knife-edge of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The Church having 
reaffirmed the primary facts of the perfect Divinity and 



MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 93 

the true humanity of Christ, the next question was as to how 
the two elements could co-exist in one and the same Person. 
Thus the discussion moved from the question of the 
Trinity, which had occupied the thoughts of theologians 
of the fourth century, to the consideration of the nature 
of Christ, which was to engage the minds of disputants 
during the fifth century, and beyond into the sixth and 
even the seventh. The controversies became more and more 
hard and narrow, unspiritual and purely polemical, as the 
weary process went on, till the Church woke up with a rude 
shock in the advent of Mohammedanism, to face the vital 
question whether Christianity was to continue to exist at 
all — in any form, orthodox or heterodox. The two heresies 
which rent the Eastern Church during the fifth century 
scarcely touched the West, although the bishop of Eome 
intervened from time to time to help towards a settlement. 
Therefore they belong essentially to the Oriental branch 
of Church history. Moreover, their effects are seen in 
the divisions of Eastern Christendom in the present day, 
one of them being represented by the Nestorians of the 
Euphrates and India, the other by the Syrian Jacobites 
and the Copts in Egypt. In the controversies of the fifth 
century we see the rise of both the movements which have 
perpetuated themselves in these two groups of Christians 
out of communion with the Greek Church, both of them 
denounced by " the holy orthodox Church " as heretical. 

We saw how the Christological speculations began to 
appear even during the course of the fourth century in 
those two very original thinkers, Apollinaris and G-regory 
of Nyssa.^ The former had been condemned by the 
council of Constantinople for denying the full humanity 
of Christ ; and the latter had come to be looked on with 
suspicion on account of his sympathies with the ideas of 
Origen. After this, whatever new lines of thought are 
followed had to come within those laid down in the Nicene 
and Cons tan tinopolitan settlement. Still, within the limits 
thus decided there was room for considerable variety of 

*P. 79. 



94 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



opinions. These turned in one or other of two directions 
according as the mind was directed to the distinction of the 
natures in Christ or to the unity of the Person. Emphasis 
on the distinction between the Divine and human natures 
in our Lord issued in Nestorianism. Insistence on the 
unity of His person pushed to an extreme led to the 
heresy known at the time as Eutychianism. In point of 
fact, however, another and a deeper tendency may be 
traced through each of these movements when we consider 
the motives that inspired them. The underlying motive 
of Nestorianism was interest in our Lord's humanity, His 
earthly life. His brotherly relations with mankind ; the 
motive prompting to Eutychianism was the aim of exalting 
the Divinity of Christ in which the human nature was 
quite swallowed up and assimilated to the infinite, all- 
controlling Divine. Nestorianism took its origin in the 
school of Antioch, where the Gospels were studied historic- 
ally and the earthly life of Jesus Christ highly valued. 
Antioch was in close touch with Constantinople, and thus 
the influence of the Syrian city was readily felt in the 
great metropolis. The opposition to Nestorianism — which 
ultimately came over the fine edge of orthodoxy on the 
other side, in the form of Eutychianism — sprang from 
Alexandria, the home of Athanasius a century before, 
famed as the stronghold of the doctrine of the Divinity 
of Christ. But immediately we name these cities we are 
prepared to see how the age-long jealousies of the 
patriarchates of which they were the seats were roused 
to range themselves on one side or the other of the 
discussions, which thus obtained local colour and excited 
partisan passions quite irrespective of the claims of truth 
or the honour of Him about whose nature the rival 
disputants professed to be so deeply concerned. 

The originator of the Nestorian line of thought was 
Theodore of Mopsuestia, and his mind was set going in 
this direction in opposition to the Apollinarians. He 
urged that for the restoration of the shattered unity of the 
cosmos it was necessary that God the Word should become 



MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 95 



a perfect man. Theodore developed his ideas of the moral 
perfection of Jesus as a man, resting this partly on the 
Virgin birth and the baptism, and partly on His union 
with the Divine Word.^ He held that there was an 
indwelling of God in Christ, generically the same as in 
the saints, but specifically different. " I am not so mad," 
he says, " as to affirm that the indwelling of God in Christ 
is after the same manner as in the saints. He dwelt in 
Christ as in a son." ^ It will be seen that such language 
finds the actual personality of Christ in His human nature, 
however closely and in however unique a way the Divine 
may be united to it. Thus the tendency of thought will be 
towards a separation into two persons — the Divine Person 
of the Logos and the human Person Jesus. That will 
not be so far from Paul of Samosata's idea of the God- 
influenced man, except that as regards the Divine, the 
Logos, the Trinitarian conception is preserved. 

Theodore's views were introduced to Constantinople by 
Nestorius, who was appointed patriarch in the year 428, 
like Chrysostom after having been a presbyter at Antioch. 
He was blameless in personal character, and he had gained 
some reputation by his fluent, sonorous eloquence. And 
yet he commenced with a false step, for in his first sermon, 
addressing the emperor, he exclaimed, " Give me the 
earth cleared of heretics, and I will give you the kingdom 
of heaven in exchange ; aid me in subduing the heretics, 
and I will aid you in vanquishing the Persians." ^ Such 
an untimely boast of bigotry disgusted sober minds, and 
Nestorius came to be branded as an " incendiary " in con- 
sequence. Not long after this the heresy-hunter was 
denounced as a heretic — a just retribution of which history 
furnishes many instances.* The trouble began with the 
sermon of a presbyter Anastasius, who had accompanied 
Nestorius from Antioch and shared with his bishop the 
ideas of Theodore, in which the preacher attacked the 

* De Incarn. ^ cis iv vl(f. ' Socrates, vii. 29. 

* It will be recollected that Arius began by denouncing the heretical 
teaching of Alexander his bishop. 



96 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

title TheotoJcos (" Bearer " or " mother of God ") as applied 
to the Virgin Mary. The term had long been in use, and 
it had the sanction of Athanasius and other trusted Fathers. 
Nevertheless Nestorius defended his friend and adopted 
the same position with reference to the title. The famous 
Cyril, a man of intense, fierce determination, now patriarch 
of Alexandria, took up the case against Nestorius. His 
record was not unblemished. Even if he had taken no part 
in the outrageous murder of the beautiful, learned, and 
refined Neo-Platonist lecturer Hypathia, when the monks 
seized her in the street, dragged her from her carriage, 
tore off her clothes, scraped the flesh from her bones with 
oyster shells, and flung her mangled remains on a fire, the 
cruel patriarch cannot be exculpated from acquiescence in 
the awful crime.^ Such was the self-appointed champion 
of the faith in opposition to the " blasphemer " Nestorius. 
The pope Celestius held a council at Eome (430), which 
condemned Nestorius. Cyril was to execute the sentence 
of deposition, but Nestorius took no notice of it. 

The quarrel became so serious that the emperor 
Theodosius n. summoned a council which met at Ephesus 
the next year (431), and is known as the Third General 
Goumil. Cyril and his party arrived before the friends of 
Nestorius from Antioch with John the patriarch of the 
church in that city at their head. It was assumed that 
he had purposely delayed. Anyhow, Cyril's haste in 
procuring the condemnation of Nestorius before the 
council was complete, and in the absence of the defenders 
of the accused, was scarcely decent and certainly not fair. 
Naturally enough Nestorius declined to appear before so 
one-sided a tribunal. When John arrived he and his 
bishops replied by voting the deposition of Cyril. Neither 
decision was effective at the moment. Nestorius relied on 
the protection of the emperor ; but this did not long save 
him. Theodosius yielded to the powerful court intrigues 
that were brought to bear upon him — for unlike his 
grandfather he had more piety than power — and Nestorius 

^ Socrates, vii. 15 ; Philostorgius, viii. 9. 



MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 97 



was banished first to Petra in Arabia and then to the 
oasis of Ptolemais in Egypt. After being captured by 
Arab brigands and suffering many other hardships for 
which the orthodox authorities showed no pity, he died 
from the effects of ill-usage in the year 439. Meanwhile 
his followers were hounded out of the empire, being driven 
over into Persia. And yet the influence of Theodore and 
Nestorius lived on, chiefly owing to the hold it got on the 
important school of theological scholarship at Edessa. 

The opposite tendency of thought which ripened into 
Eutychianism was just the emphasising and perhaps carrying 
further forward of the ideas of Cyril. Although this notorious 
Alexandrian dogmatist has been canonised and although 
his writings are now prized among the most highly honoured 
works of the Fathers, it is not easy to distinguish his 
position from that of the heresy that came under con- 
demnation at the next general council. He held that 
Nestorianism involved a duality of persons in Christ — the 
human Jesus being one ' person, the Divine Logos another. 
And yet he was not content to assert a unity of persons ; 
he maintained that there was a unity of nature.^ Nor 
would he allow of any real Jcenosis in the incarnation. 
While Jesus lay in the cradle, to all appearance a helpless 
infant. He was actually administering the affairs of the 
universe. When as a man He appeared to be ignorant of 
anything, this was only in appearance. Even when He 
said He did not know the day or hour of the Parousia, that 
only meant that He had no knowledge for the disciples 
which he could communicate to them. 

But it was the pronounced expression of such views, 
carried perhaps a little further by Eutyches, the archi- 
mandrite of a large monastery near Constantinople, that drew 

^ ivcaais tG)v irpoathirwv will not suffice ; there must be ^vuais Kod* 
vwdaraaip. This was quite in accordance with the idea of virdaraaLS in the 
Cappadociau theologians, so that there is nothing peculiar to Cyril so far as 
Dorner seems to imply {Person of Christ, Eng. Trans., Div. ii. vol. i. p. 
57). But Cyril goes further and has the expression fiLa (pOais {Ep. ad Acac, 
p. 115, quoted by Dorner, op. cit.), verbally at any rate an anticipation of 
Monophysitism, also ivi^r-q^ tpvciK-q, Ep. ad mmiarchoA Aeg. p. 9. 

7 



98 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



down on them the disapproval of a lynx-eyed orthodoxy. 
Eutyches was an obstinate, narrow-minded old man who 
had spent several years in retirement when he came 
forward to contest the error of Nestorianism. He did this • 
so extravagantly that to his amazement he found himself 
charged with heresy in an opposite direction. He main- 
tained that the two natures in Christ were fused together 
in the incarnation, so that there became " one incarnate 
nature of God the Word." His opinions were condemned 
at a local synod ; but Eutyches would not submit and 
demanded a general council, which was convened at 
Ephesus by Theodosius ll. and met in August 449. It 
was grossly packed by the friends of Eutyches. Those 
bishops who had taken part in the condemnation of the 
archimandrite at Constantinople, as well as others coming 
from the East, and therefore suspected of Nestorianism, 
were not allowed to vote. All reporters except those of 
the Eutychian party were expelled. If any one who had 
taken part in the obnoxious Constantinople synod ventured 
to open his mouth in favour of " two natures," he was 
immediately shouted down with cries of " Nestorian ! " 
" Tear him asunder ! " " Burn him alive ! " " As he divides, 
so let him be divided ! " The orthodoxy of Eutyches was 
vindicated, and an anathema was pronounced against 
Nestorius amid shouts — " Drive out, burn, tear, cut asunder, 
massacre all who hold two natures ! " Dioscurus, Cyril's 
successor at Alexandria, was not satisfied with a mere dis- 
cussion and its vote. " Call in the counts," he shouted. 
Thereupon the proconsul of Asia entered, attended by 
soldiers and monks armed with swords and clubs and 
carrying chains. The panic-stricken bishops tried to hide 
under the benches, in dark corners of the church, wherever 
they could creep out of sight. But they were dragged forth, 
threatened, even struck, and ultimately forced to sign the 
condemnation of Flavian, the patriarch of Constantinople, 
who was leading the opposite party. 

It is said that Dioscurus, Cyril's successor, the patriarch 
of Alexandria, struck Flavian in the face, kicked liim, 



MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 99 

stamped on him. Be that as it may, Flavian died a few days 
later from the ill-treatment he had received at the council. 
The emperor confirmed the decisions of this disreputable 
council. But Leo I., bishop of Eome, the first of the great 
popes, repudiated it as invalid and sternly denounced its 
proceedings, designating it Latrocinialis — the " Eobber 
Council." 1 

The Eastern Church was now miserably divided. 
Egypt, Thrace, and Palestine held to the Eutychian side, 
while Syria, Pontus, and Asia supported the opposite 
position, which Flavian had championed, but which was 
now maintained by the most powerful man of his age, the 
great Leo. The next year (a.d. 450) Theodosius ii. died 
through a fall from his horse. His sister, Pulcheria, was 
already exercising great power in the State, and she now 
married a senator Marcian, sixty years of age, who thus 
becoming emperor, at once reversed the policy of his 
predecessor and entered into communication with Leo for 
the settlement of the troubled state of the Church. An 
indirect proof of what this condition was may be gathered 
from the fact that the following year Marcian issued a law 
against brawling in church and forbidding meetings in 
private houses or in the street. The same year he 
banished Eutyches. The result of the emperor's cor- 
respondence with the pope was that Marcian summoned a 
general council which was to have met at Nicsea, the now 
venerated site of orthodoxy. Subsequently, to suit the 
convenience of the emperor, the place of assembly was 
changed to Chalcedon on the Bosphorus, as that was near 
Constantinople. 

The council of Chalcedon is the last of the four general 
councils recognised both by the Churches of the West — 
Protestant {i.e. Lutheran and Anglican) as well as Eoman 
Catholic — and by the main body of the Eastern Church. 
It met in the church of St. Euphemia, holding its first 
session on 8th October, a.d. 451. There were some five 
or six hundred bishops present, most of them from the 

^ Leo, Epis. 95, in Nicenc and Post-Nicene Fathers, voL xii. p. 71. 



100 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Oriental provinces of the empire. Thus this council, like 
each of its three predecessors — at Mcsea, Constantinople, 
and Ephesus — was not only held in the East, but was also 
almost entirely Oriental in composition. Leo was very 
desirous to have the council at Eome. But that was 
not to be. All the councils were summoned by emperors, 
and it was in the East that the imperial government held 
supreme sway over the Church. No emperor with any 
concern for his authority could have consented to the 
assembly of a general council of the Church at Eome, 
especially under so important a person as Leo i., who was 
really much more influential in the West than Marcian 
himself. Leo was not present ; but he exerted a weighty 
influence on the proceedings of the council. The papal 
delegates insisted that Dioscurus should not be allowed to 
sit as a judge in a case where his own conduct was on trial. 
He was condemned, and deposed, and subsequently banished 
to Gangra in Paphlagonia, where he died three years later 
(a.d. 454). Although this was on the ground of his mis- 
conduct at Ephesus and his having dared to excommunicate 
" the most holy and most blessed archbishop of Eome," 
the heresy he had defended was condemned. Having 
first confirmed the decrees of the three earlier councils, the 
council of Chalcedon anathematised Nestorianism on the one 
hand, and Eutychianism on the other. Leo's " Tome," an im- 
portant doctrinal statement contained in a letter which the 
pope had addressed to Flavian, was adopted as the standard 
statement of orthodoxy ; and to this was added a minutely 
discriminating definition of doctrine. The " Tome " is 
an admirably balanced statement of the Church's position 
with regard to the unity of the Person and the distinction 
of the two natures in Christ, and the formula of Chalcedon 
which accepts and confirms this statement carefully re- 
capitulates the ideas contained therein. It is to be 
observed that neither document attempts any explanation 
of the incarnation, nor does either really attempt to resolve 
the apparent paradox propounded by its definitions. Each 
is content to define the orthodox position, clearly, unmistak- 



MOVEMENTS TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 101 

ably, finally. In these two documents we have the 
Church's authoritative declaration of the incarnation. The 
settlement of Chalcedon declares that, " We, therefore, 
following the Holy Fathers, confess one and the same Son, 
our Lord Jesus Christ ; and we do with one voice teach, 
that He is perfect in Godhead and that He is perfect in 
Manhood, being truly God and truly Man ; that He is of 
a reasonable soul and body, consubstantial with the Father 
as touching His Godhead, and consubstantial with us as 
touching His Manhood . . . acknowledged to be in two 
natures without confusion, change, division, separation," — 
and more to the same purport. This then is the final 
orthodoxy, to defend which has been the main business of 
the theologians of the Greek Church for all subsequent 
ages. Those who want more than statement and defence ; 
those who desire metaphysical explanation, must look 
elsewhere than to the orthodox confession of the Eastern 
theologians. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 

(a) Evagrius ; Nicephorus ; Procopius ; Theodore the Reader, 
fragments (to a.d. 518). Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum . . . 
collectio, vii. 

(&) Dorner, Person of Christ, Eng. Trans., Div. ii. i., 1861 ; Hefele, 
Hist, of Councils, Eng. Trans., vol. iii., 1883 ; vol. iv., 1895 ; 
Ottley, Incarnation, part vii., 1896. 

The sequel to the council of Chalcedon was more like the 
sequel to the council of Nicaea than the history consequent 
to the council of Constantinople. That second general 
council which condemned Arianism did really seem to be 
successful, for after it we hear much less of the heresy 
within the borders of the empire ; but then, as we have 
observed, it was already breaking up in consequence of 
internal divisions. On the other hand, the fourth general 
council, like the venerated first council, was quite unable 
to suppress the heresies it was especially summoned to 
condemn. Nestorianism was only banished ; in exile it 
spread and flourished among the Persian Christians, and 
farther east Eutychianism, slightly modified, went on 
within the empire under the new title of Monophysitism. 
By dropping the obnoxious name of its founder, who was 
sacrificed as a victim to the passion for orthodoxy, and 
adopting a descriptive title, it was better able to emphasise 
its central idea and at the same time spread its influence 
within the Church, although its adherents, being out of 
sympathy with the dominant party, stood aloof and gradu- 
ally crystallised into a sect. There was some softening of 
the extreme views that had been put forth by the old 

102 



THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 



103 



monk Eutyches, a man of no breadth of mind or depth of 
insight. The Monophysites were more refined and meta- 
physical in their thinking. While they insisted on the 
oneness of our Lord's nature in opposition to the Chal- 
cedonian dogma of the continuance of two natures in the 
one person, they were willing to admit that He came to be 
the incarnate Christ by the union, the fusing together, of 
two natures. Thus they would allow that He was " of two 
natures," ^ though they denied that He existed " in two 
natures " ; ^ and while with Eutyches the human nature 
was so absorbed that it virtually vanished, according to 
the Monophysites Christ had a composite nature.^ More- 
over, they admitted the continuance of the two sets of 
attributes — the human and the Divine — although only as 
qualities of one substance. The union of the natures, 
however, could not be justly compared to a mere amalgam 
for two reasons. In the first place, each nature underwent 
change, the human taking on Divine properties and the 
Divine taking on human characteristics. There was this 
difference, that change in the Divine nature was only " by 
grace," an effect of an act of will done for the sake of the 
redemption of the world, while full freedom remained to 
' abstain from it. There was no kenosis, no actual self- 
emptying, but only a condescending to the forms and 
modes of a human life, while the Divine remained in essence 
unchanged. Then, in the second place, the Divine nature 
so completely dominated the human element that, except 
in the outward appearance of a man's form and an earthly 
life, this human element really counted for nothing. We 
might state it thus. The fractional existence of the human 
nature being a finite numerator with an infinite denomin- 
ator, it was really equivalent to zero. If / stands for 
a finite and oo for infinity we might express the doctrine 

by the formula — =0. 

When we endeavour to trace out the course of the 

^ iK duo (f)vae(j3v. ^ iv 8vo ^v^eo'iv. 

^ Called /xia 0i5<rts aOpderos. 



104 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



dreary Monophysite controversy which circled round this 
position we do not see on the surface of it sufficient cause 
for all the heat it developed, all the dust it raised. Here 
was a fine point of theology, so difficult to determine that 
only an expert could state it correctly, and yet it divided 
cities into furious factions with howling mobs and fatal 
riots. It is not enough to lay down the cynical principle 
that the heat of a controversy varies directly with the 
smallness of the difference between the contending parties — 
although there are not wanting instances apparently con- 
firming it — as in the quarrel between the " Old Lights " 
and the " New Lights " among the Presbyterians of Scot- 
land. The long-drawn Monophysite controversy threatened 
the disintegration of the Church and endangered the peace 
of the empire ; in fact it did actually effect the disintegra- 
tion of the Church by breaking off huge fragments that have 
remained down to the present day in separation from 
the Greek communion, which arrogates to itself the title 
of orthodox. Surely there must be some sufficient cause 
for so obstinate a schism. 

Among men earnest in their religious faith no doubt 
the charm of the Monophysite doctrine was found in the 
honour it appeared to give to Christ. This view was most » 
vehemently maintained by the paonks of the Egyptian 
deserts, men who were at once grossly ignorant and 
passionately in earnest, of the stuff that fanatics are 
made of, prototypes and in part ancestors of the modem 
dervishes. The immediate motive of the movement into » 
which these half savage monks threw themselves with ' 
such fiery enthusiasm was antagonism to Nestorianism. 



It was represented to them by Dioscurus that the council 



of Chalcedon favoured that heresy — which had been con- \ \ 
demned at the council of Ephesus ; it was even rumoured / 
that Nestorius had been invited to Chalcedon and bad 
only been prevented from attending by his timely death 
on the way thither. Then the Nestorians were regarded 
with horror as men who divided Christ into two persons, 
who really denied the incarnation, and who were virtually 




THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 



105 



Unitarians. To oppose this dishonouring error the Mono- 
physite presented himself as the champion of the perfect 
Divinity of Christ. Moreover, the popularity of the term 
Theotokos, the watchword of anti-Nestorianism, tended in 
the same direction. With this, and powerfully aided by 
it, came the growing cult of the Virgin, especially welcome 
in Egypt, the original home of the Mother-god Isis. The 
visitor to Cairo will see displayed in shops of antiquities 
statuettes of Isis with Horus in her arms, found in ancient 
Egyptian tombs, which are almost perfect counterparts of 
Christian statuettes of the Virgin and child. There came 
gradually into use such phrases as " God was born " ; " God 
died." The whole tendency of thought in the Church was 
moving in this direction. It was rather hard on the Mono- 
physites that they were excommunicated as heretics, since 
generation after generation of the orthodox was moving 
nearer and nearer to their position during the course of 
the succeeding centuries. In fact, all through the later 
patristic period and down into the Middle Ages the 
humanity of Christ became more and more shadowy, and 
His Divinity increasingly dominated the minds of the Church 
teachers, so that sorrowful people who were craving for 
human sympathy turned from the awful Byzantine Christ 
to the compassionate Mary, and found in the mother that 
actual human sympathy which it had been the object of 
the now neglected incarnation to bring them in her Son. 
It is hardly too much to say that Mary became to all 
intents and purposes the incarnate Saviour, while the 
humanity of Christ and His incarnation were lost in the 
grandeur of His Divinity. 

But while these religious and doctrinal tendencies were 
influencing serious minds, the disgraceful history of the 
dispute shows that personal pique, party passion, political 
intrigue, jealousy, and ambition only too often swept all 
before them, impelling men to the clash of collision 
with little or no genuine appreciation of the merits of the 
cause they were defending. We must go further afield, 
beyond the Church and the cell, to the decaying society of 



106 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

the empire in the throes of dissohition, for an explanation 
of the abominations that now accompanied the theological 
quarrels of monks and clergy. The squat, savage Huns 
from the East — the yellow peril of the empire, and the 
rough, vigorous Teutons from the North — its real salvation, 
were now pouring over the rich fields of southern and 
western Europe. At the same time the helplessness of the 
legionaries, due to their numerical impoverishment in the 
dwindling population of the provinces, that was waiting for 
the fresh blood of a new healthy stock, had left the cities 
a prey to the worst elements of society. In some respects 
Alexandria and Antioch, and occasionally even Constan- 
tinople, were now like Paris at the time of the Eevolution. 
Men came to the front who in more settled times would 
never have been heard of ; inhuman deeds were done which 
revealed the conscious corruption of an old civilisation as 
more cruel, more foul, more bestial than the unabashed 
habitude of primitive barbarism. 

The Emperor Marcian had forcibly upheld the decision^ 
of the council of Chalcedon by forbidding the Eutychians 
to hold meetings, to ordain clergy, or to build churches or 
monasteries. But to silence an obnoxious party is not to 
convert it. The death of the emperor, in January 457, 
was the signal for an outbreak of violence by the followers 
of Dioscurus against his successor Proterius and the orthodox 
Alexandrians. Timothy, nicknamed ^lurus — " the Cat " — 
one of the presbyters of Dioscurus, who had been deposed 
and banished to Lybia, now returned secretly to Alexandria, 
and crept about at night, cat-like, visiting the cells of ignorant 
monks. On being asked who he was, he would answer, " I 
am an angel sent to warn you to break off communion with 
Proterius, and to choose Timothy as bishop." ^ Unfortu- 
nately Proterius had behaved like a tyrant, and had only 
held his position by the aid of a guard of 2,000 soldiers, so 
that Timothy had no difficulty in gathering a following 
from the indignant populace as well as from the monks. 
Towards the end of Lent, with the support of these 
* Theodore the Reader, i. 1 ; see Gibbon, chap. xlii. 



THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 



107 



adherents, he seized the great " Caesarean " church, aud was 
there consecrated by two bishops whom Proterius and his 
synod had deposed. Meanwhile the patriarch was sitting 
in his palace with his clergy. A few days later Timothy 
was expelled from the city by the civil authorities. This 
enraged the mob, who rose in riot on Easter Tuesday, hunted 
Proterius into his baptistery, and there murdered him. After 
hanging up his body for a time, they dragged it through the 
streets and then hacked it to pieces. Some of them, reduced 
to the level of the lowest savages, devoured the entrails. 
The remains were burnt and the ashes scattered to the 
winds.^ The clergy of the orthodox party were now 
expelled from their churches and their places filled by 
men whom Timothy appointed. Fourteen of the deposed 
bishops, who had been driven, as they said in their account 
of these proceedings, to " a life more full of fear than that 
of hares or frogs," travelled to Constantinople to lay their 
complaint before the new emperor, Leo i.^ Timothy also 
sent a deputation to represent his side of the case. 
Unwilling to bear the onus of a decision, Leo consulted 
the bishops of the various provinces, all of whom but one, 
Amphilochius of Side, condemned Timothy, and, with the 
exception of Amphilochius of Side, also accepted the 
council of Chalcedon.^ Timothy was described as " a 
tyrant and a man of blood," " a homicide, a slayer of his 
father," one who " became not a shepherd of Christ's sheep, 
but an intolerable wolf," and more to the same effect, 
though some added the qualifying clause, "if the state- 
ments of the exiles were true." * 

The subsequent career of this unscrupulous schemer is 
highly significant. In spite of the condemnation by the 
bishops, and although the pope wrote to the emperor 
urging the deposition of such a character, the influence 
of his friends at court delayed this action on the part 
of the government for two years. Even then Timothy 

1 This is stated in the letter of the Egyptian bishops to Anatolius of 
Constantinople, Mansi, vii. 533. 

^ Mansi, vii. 536. ^ Evagrius, ii. 10. ^ Mansi, vii. 537 ff. 



108 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



obtained permission to come to Constantinople and plead 
his cause, on the cool assumption that the only objection 
to him was his heresy ; but though he was restored for a 
time he was soon after again removed from Alexandria. 
Some years later, when Constantinople was in the hands 
of the usurper Basiliscus, Timothy was summoned to the 
capital and welcomed by his admirers with the acclama- 
tion, " Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the 
Lord." 

Eeinstated in his position at Alexandria, the outrageous 
hypocrite took credit to himself for his gentle treatment 
of Timothy Salofaciolus, who had held the patriarchate 
for sixteen years, and now had to make way for the 
returned exile. When his flatterers cried, "Thou hast 
fed thine enemies, pope," he accepted the compliment, 
exclaiming, " Yes, indeed I have fed them." 

We may be sure that Timothy ^lurus had good reason 
for acting so mildly. He could see how popular his rival had 
become. A man of a gracious, pacific disposition, Timothy 
Salofaciolus had been rebuked by the Emperor Zeno for not 
exercising discipline more severely. He was so universally 
appreciated that even Monophysites would stop him in the 
streets to express their personal respect for him and their 
regret at being compelled to stand aloof from his com- 
munion. It is pleasant to meet with such a character 
amidst the narrow-minded partisans and fiery polemical 
theologians of the age. We need not conclude that he 
was a wholly exceptional character. Those were times of 
war, when fighting men came to the front. But mean- 
while no doubt many a country pastor was quietly at work 
on his labour of love among the members of his simple 
flock, and a host of good men and women were endeavouring 
to walk in the footsteps of their Master, although history 
has preserved no records of their unexciting lives. The 
emergency into publicity of such a man as this amiable 
patriarch of Alexandria lifts for a moment the veil 
that hides the better side of the life of the Church. 
Ecclesiastical history is mainly the story of important 



THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 



109 



bishops. A picture of the Christian life of their times 
might surprise us with its much brighter colours. Al- 
though subsequently an attempt was made to again 
remove iElurus, it was frustrated on the plea of his old age, 
and he was allowed to remain patriarch of Alexandria till 
his death. 

Now the significance of this extraordinary story lies 
in the fact that, although the conscience of Christendom 
must have revolted against the enormity of his crime, and 
although his subtle, intriguing ways proved him to be 
a cunning schemer as well as a man of violence, Timothy 
had a powerful following throughout his career, and was 
permitted to end his days at one of the highest posts of 
honour in the odour of sanctity. The indignant protest of 
the bishops voiced the wholesome horror which we should 
expect all right-minded people to feel at such deeds as he 
had committed. Yet it only came from the orthodox party, 
that is to say, from his enemies. His friends the Mono- 
phy sites were ready to profit by his wickedness and even to 
condone it for the sake of their cause. The only approach 
to an excuse for them is that they had a cause which they 
believed to be right and true, that therefore they were not 
merely place-hunters. But in view of the development of 
theological rancour and partizan passion which such a state 
of affairs reveals, this very excuse is a plain proof how 
entirely the degenerate monks and their adherents in the 
mob had substituted metaphysical accuracy as their test of 
true religion for the old sound idea of the prophet : " What 
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " 

Next to Timothy ^lurus the most conspicuous leader 
of the Monophy sites at this time was Peter the Fuller (a.d. 
465-474), the patriarch of Antioch. It is difficult to 
piece together the several accounts of his early life,^ but 
according to the arrangement of the data worked out by 
Tillemont, he first appears as a monk in Bythinia. Expelled 

^ In Acacius of Constantinople, Theodore the Reader, and Alexander 
a monk of Cyprus. 



110 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



from his monastery for heresy and misconduct, he goes to 
Constantinople and worms his way into the confidence of 
Zeno, the future emperor. His true character being dis- 
covered here also he is obliged to move again, and going 
east in the train of Zeno he comes to Antioch, where he 
wins the ear of the populace, especially those who are 
still in sympathy with Apollinarianism, persuading these 
people that the patriarch Martyrius is a secret Nestorian. 
The result is a public tumult resulting in the expulsion of 
Martyrius and the election of Peter to his place.^ In all 
these historical studies it is a wholesome caution, due as 
much to justice as to charity, to be slow to admit accusa- 
tions against the moral character of heretics brought 
forward by their opponents. For us the significant fact is 
that a Monophysite secured the patriarchate of Antioch. 
Thus for the moment the rival sees are both in possession 
of representatives of the Alexandrian doctrine. Peter is 
especially notorious for having supplied to the Trisagion 
the phrase, " Who was crucified for us." ^ He formulates 
the liturgical sentence, " Holy God, holy Strong One, holy 
Immortal One, who for our sakes was crucified, have mercy 
on us." This gave rise to what has been known as the 
" Theopassian controversy." Thus, as Dorner justly re- 
marks, " Patripassianism had, consequently, returned in an 
exaggerated Trinitarian form." ^ 

The affairs of the Church in the East now became 
more and more mixed up with those of the empire. Leo i. 
died in the year 474, and was nominally succeeded by 
his daughter Ariadne's young son Leo ii., who died within 
a twelvemonth, when Ariadne's husband Zeno became 
emperor. He was a rude Isaurian, a native of the moun- 
tainous region north of the Taurus range, and he used the 
opportunities of a court to plunge into the most outrageous 
debauchery. It was not difficult for the one strong person 
in Constantinople, the late Emperor Leo i.'s widow, to raise 
a revolt in favour of her brother Basiliscus, before which 

^ Tilleiiiout, Erap. vi. }). 404 fV. - 6 a-Tavpccdeis 8i rj/xds. 

^ Pei sva of Christ, Div. ii. vol. i. p. 125. 



THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 



111 



Zeiio fled to his old lionie beyond the mountains. Basi- 
Uscus leaned on the support of the Monophysites, and even 
dared to issue a circular letter condemning the council of 
Chalcedon — the first instance of an emperor on his own 
authority presuming to reverse the decision of a general 
council. It carries the State's interference with the 
Church a stage further. 

Acacius the patriarch of Constantinople stoutly resisted 
this imperial favouring of Monophysitism ; he draped the 
cathedral and the clergy in black in sign of mourning for 
the calamity that had come on the Church. Daniel, the 
greatest of the Stylites then living, came down from his 
pillar, entered the city, and preached to the awestruck 
populace. Crowds assembled at the gates of the cathedral 
in protest against the doings of the emperor. Meanwhile 
the reign of Basiliscus had been disgraced by disorderly 
and violent scenes in the court. Thus another revolt was 
provoked which issued in the deposition of the usurper and 
the return of Zeno to power. This man was the very last 
person who should have ventured to interfere with the 
creed of the Church. What could an ignorant debauchee 
know of such abstract mysteries as it involved ? in what 
spirit could such a man handle them ? The very idea of 
such a thing is shocking to the Christian conscience. But 
Zeno was a weak creature who lent himself as a tool for 
abler hands. It is an ominous sign of the settled sub- 
servience of the Church to the State, that a great ecclesiastic 
should have condescended to make use of so unclean an 
instrument. Nothing could more forcibly demonstrate the 
immense contrast between the condition of the Church in 
the East and its condition in the West than a comparison of 
the policy of Acacius the patriarch of Constantinople with 
Leo of Eome who had died but a few years earlier (a.d. 
461). Soon after the Eoman pontiff had proved himself the 
most powerful personage in the West, saving the empire, 
saving civilisation, by his courage, energy, and ability, his 
brother in the Eastern capital was to be seen cringing 
before the throne of a low, semi-barbarous sensualist in 



112 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



order to obtain imperial influence in favour of his Church 
policy.^ The result of Acacius's adroit manipulation of the 
emperor was the issue of the famous document known as 
Zeno's Henoticon (a.d. 482). 

This document, which aimed at bringing the divided 
Church into unity, sought peace by means of vagueness. 
It was destined from the first to fail, although it was well 
meant by Acacius whom we should probably regard as its 
author. While re-affirming the decrees of Nicsea and Con- 
stantinople, it asserts that our Lord Jesus Christ is " Himself 
God incarnate, consubstantial with the Father according to 
His Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to His 
manhood . . . was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the 
Virgin Mary, mother of God " ; and that He is " one Son, not 
two." Further, it condemns those " who divide or con- 
found the natures," or admit only a fantastical incarnation, 
and it anathematises all who do or think "anything to 
the contrary, either now or at any other time, either at 
Chalcedon or in any other synod," especially Nestorius and 
Eutyches and their followers.^ The very different manner 
of referring to the councils of Nicsea and Constantinople, 
on the one hand, and Chalcedon, on the other, is highly 
significant. The Henoticon was formally addressed to the 
bishops and clergy, monks and people, of Egypt and the 
Lybian district, but really only intended for the benefit of 
the Monophysites in order to reconcile them to union with 
the Church.^ They could accept it without abandoning 
their specific tenets, while the orthodox could admit it 
while still holding to Leo's Tome and the Chalcedon de- 
cision. Some may think this a reasonable compromise on 
so difficult and abstruse a question. But no one who 
understood the temper of its age could have hoped much 
from it. It failed to accomplish its immediate purpose 

^ Robertson, however, justly remarks that " it must be remembered that 
the subsequent quarrel of Acacius with Rome has exposed him to hard treat- 
ment by writers in the Roman interest " {Hist, of Christian Church, vol. ii. 
p. 275). 

2 Evagrius, iii. 14. 

^ So Tillemont points out, Mem. EccUs. xvi. 327. 



THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 



113 



of uniting the Monophysites and the " orthodox *' party of 
Chalcedon. 

At Alexandria the Monophysite patriarch Peter Mongus 
signed, and he was allowed to retain his bishopric on 
condition that he received the Catholics to his communion. 
But the result of this concession on his part was that his 
own party broke off from him and remained in stiff separa- 
tion from the main body of the Church under the title of 
the Acephali — " the Headless." So little or nothing was 
gained in Egypt, the scene of the schism. Meanwhile, the 
unfortunate document that was meant to be the flag of 
truce, if not the treaty of peace, developed a new line of 
cleavage in quite another direction. This cavalier treat- 
ment of Chalcedon gave mortal offence at Eome. For 
Chalcedon was the most Eoman in its sympathies of all the 
general councils, since its elaborate statement of doctrine 
had been based on the great Leo's venerated Tome. The 
Henoticon was regarded in Eome as a distinctly heretical 
document, and it produced a severance between the Eastern 
and the Western churches which lasted for thirty-six years. 
Peter Mongus, the one champion of the document, was an 
unworthy man quite unfit to act as peacemaker, and while he 
was trying to force his bishops to accept it on pain of depo- 
sition, he was privately negotiating with the Pope Sylvester. 
On the accession of Felix to the papacy (a.d. 484), that 
pope immediately took strong measures. He cited Acacius 
to Eome ; but Acacias declined to come at the bidding of 
his brother patriarch. Then Felix, with the support of an 
Italian synod, " deposed " Acacius ; but the patriarch took 
no notice of his " deposition," and retained his position un- 
molested. Thus the Henoticon was another wedge driven 
in between the East and the West, and it scarcely wanted 
a prophet to predict what must be the end with this ever- 
widening fissure in the Catholic Church. 

Anastasius, who succeeded Zeno in the year 491, was 
already well advanced in age, and yet he reigned for twenty- 
seven years, during the whole of which time Eome stood 
aloof from the Eastern Church in stern disapproval. The 
8 



114 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



emperor was welcomed as " the sweetest tempered of 
sovereigns," and greeted with the complimentary acclama- 
tion, " Eeign as you have lived." ^ Unfortunately an im- 
maculate character even when joined to an amiable 
disposition will not secure success in a ruler who lacks 
discernment and vigour. The emperor's spirit of toleration 
was intolerable to a society which clamours for violent 
polemics. Gradually he was driven to lean more and more 
to the Monophysite side. Wild stories were told of how 
monks and priests, archimandrites and patriarchs, behaved 
like dancing dervishes round the old man, some shouting 
"Anathema to the council of Chalcedon!" others, "Anathema 
to Eutyches — to Zeno — to Acacius ! " 

Constantinople now became a centre of frequent dis- 
turbances. The symbol of the Monophysites was Peter's 
addition to the Trisagion, " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God 
Almighty," consisting of the phrase, " Who was crucified 
for us." When this full sentence was sung in the great 
Basilica the Catholic party shouted the Trisagion in its 
original shorter form. Soon the opponents came to blows 
and the quarrel spread to the streets. The orthodox 
party carried about the head of a Monophysite monk on a 
pole, crying, " See the head of an enemy of the Trinity " ; 
they flung down the statues of Anastasius, burnt the houses 
of the two prefects, and received the emperor's emissaries 
with a shower of stones. The next day they rushed into 
the circus to see the aged man — now eighty-one years old — 
seated on his throne without either purple robe or diadem. 
Not having strength of voice to make himself heard in that 
wild, seething mob of excited people, he proclaimed his 
readiness to abdicate. Touched by the pathetic sight of 
their feeble, humiliated emperor, the people accepted some 
vague assurance that he would respect the faith of 
Chalcedon. But Anastasius was now in the hands of the 
Monophysites, and even after this pitiable scene he was 
driven to demand an anathema on the council of Chalcedon 
from the bishops. Since they refused, all over the East, 

^ See Gibbon, chap. xxxv. ; Tillemont, Hist, des Emp. vi. 472-652. 



THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES 



115 



but especially in Syria, orthodox bishops were driven out of 
their churches. When the pope interfered some negotia- 
tions followed, which Anastasius ended with unexpected 
dignity by declaring, " We can bear insults and contempt, 
but we cannot allow ourselves to be commanded." 

Meanwhile, the rigour of persecution imder the domin- 
ance of the Monophysites in the East even surpassed the 
ugly record of persecution by Yalens and his Arian allies 
more than a century earlier. The bad pre-eminence in 
these exploits is accorded to Severus, who was patriarch 
of Antioch from A.D. 512 till 518. 

These were six terrible years for those Syrians who 
adhered to the decision of Chalcedon. Neale, who is too 
ready to listen to the denunciation of a heretic by the 
orthodox, paints the character of Severus in the darkest 
colours.^ But while we must accept the testimonies of 
bitter foes with some caution, it is difficult to resist the 
conclusion that this Monophysite patriarch was a man of 
blood. His presence in Alexandria and Constantinople at 
an earlier period had been the signal for sanguinary outbreaks 
at both places, for which he must be held more or less 
responsible. No sooner did he obtain the exalted position 
of the headship of the Church at Antioch with its sup- 
remacy over the Oriental bishops, than he expressly 
anathematised the council of Chalcedon in his synodical 
letters announcing his enthronement. A few complied at 
once ; some yielded to violence ; others stoutly resisted the 
heretical patriarch's contention. Among these, as Evagrius 
tells us, was Cosmas the bishop of the historian's native 
place, Epiphanea on the Orontes, who sent his senior deacon 
with a letter deposing Severus. It was a dangerous 
embassy, for the patriarch maintained the majesty of royal 
state at his palace and was held in awe by all about his 
court. So the deacon disguised himself in woman's attire, 
and approaching Severus " with delicate carriage," having 
let his veil fall to his breast, acted the part of a weeping 
suppliant presenting a petition, as he handed in the letter, 

^ Patriarchate of Antioch^ Pp. 163, 164. 



116 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



and immediately after slipped away unobserved among 
the crowd.^ The anecdote vividly illustrates the tyranny 
of the stern prelate and the terror he was inspiring. Of 
course he took no notice of what he would only regard as 
a daring insult. Poor Anastasius was now so much under 
the power of the Monophysites that he ordered his military 
commander in the Lebanon to eject Cosmas and another 
recalcitrant bishop from their sees, although with his usual 
mildness sending an apology with the order, and expressly 
stipulating that it must only be executed if this could be 
done without bloodshed.^ Severus himself, if we are to 
believe the statements of the opposite party, acted in a very 
different spirit, loading orthodox monks and clergy with 
irons, slaughtering some and flinging out their dead bodies 
for birds and beasts to devour, drowning others in the 
Orontes.^ 



* Evagrius, iii. 34. ^ Ihid. 

- i\eaie, Patriarchate of Aniioch, p. 164 ; Theophanes, p. 136. 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 

(a) Evagrius, Rist. Eccl. iv. ; Mansi, ix. x. ; Theophanes, Ghrono- 

graphia ; Anastasius, Historia. 
(h) Gibbon, chap, xlvii. ; Dorner, Person of Christ, Div. ii. part i. ; 
Otley, The Incarnation, part vii. ; Hefele, History of the 
GouncilSy Eng. trans., vol. iv. 

I. The death of Anastasius and the accession of the rough 
soldier Justin (a.d. 518) put an end to the Monophysite 
prosperity, and with the withdrawal of the Henoticon also 
brought the separation from communion with Eome to an 
end. Except in Egypt, which remained Monophysite, the 
work of reunion was comparatively easy. The result was 
a triumph for the papacy and a strengthening of the power 
of Rome in the Church. 

In April 527 Justin's nephew, Justinian, was associated 
in the government of the empire, and in August he became 
sole emperor by the death of his uncle. He was a man of 
simple, frugal habits, most industrious, and very decided in 
his adhesion to the decision of Chalcedon — proving his 
orthodoxy in the usual way — by persecuting the heterodox. 
One of the most important of Justinian's actions marks a 
further stage in the suppression of paganism. In the year 
531 he closed the schools of philosophy at Athens, where 
the Neo-Platonists, the most determined enemies of Chris- 
tianity, were teaching. This was the end of the faded glory 
of ancient Athenian culture. The same year Justinian 
enacted that all pagans and heretics should be excluded 
from civil and military offices. According to Procopius, one 
result of his drastic measures was that some of the ancient 

117 



118 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



sect of Montanists in Phrygia shut themselves up with 
their wives and children in their churches, set fire to the 
buildings, and perished in the flames.^ 

Justinian's consort, the beautiful and facinating Empress 
Theodora, has come down to history as a woman of utter 
depravity, to be classed with a Messalina or a Lucretia 
Borgia ; but this scandal is solely owing to the account of 
her which Procopius left in his secret history, published 
after his death, according to which she was a notoriously 
vicious actress when she married the staid emperor.^ 
Nothing that the same writer published during his lifetime 
brings the slightest reproach against her moral character, 
nor has any evidence been adduced to support the charges 
contained in the posthumous work. It appears that her 
name has suffered all these years from a gross libel due to 
wicked spite, or at best, to the inventions of a prurient 
imagination. Theodora was hated by the orthodox party 
on theological grounds ; and yet none of the bishops whom 
she opposed ventured to breathe a word against her reputa- 
tion. Surely that is strong evidence for the defence. 
There is no doubt that she had been an actress. But the 
real charge against her was that she was a zealous Mono- 
physite. As patroness of the heretics, she was able to 
secure her friends some advantages while the attention of 
the government was distracted by the Gothic invasion 
of Italy and the consequent troubles that enveloped the 
empire. 

Meanwhile the interminable theological controversy 
was entering on a new sphere in the discussion concerning 
" The Three Chapters." ^ This title is given to a formulated 
series of accusations — (1) against the person and writings 
of Theodore of Mopsuestia; (2) against the writings of 
Theodoret in opposition to Cyril ; and (3) against the letter of 
Ibas of Edessa, a friend of Nestorius, addressed to the Persian 

^ Procopius, Hist. Arc. 11. An authority to be taken with some suspicion ; 
but in the present case there does not seem to be good reason to doubt his 
terrible story. 

2 Hist. Arc, 9. * Tpia /ce^dXaia. 



THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 119 

bishop Maris. It was cleverly argued that the real objec- 
tion to the council of Chalcedon was not occasioned by its 
doctrinal statements, but was found in its approval of these 
men, who, it was asserted, were tainted with Nestorianism. 
Justinian accepted the convenient suggestion, and published 
an edict condemning the accused writers — one more of the 
many imperial acts of interference with fine questions of 
doctrine in the Church. The Eastern bishops, with their 
usual subserviency, for the most part submitted to the 
emperor's decree. The Westerns, especially the Africans, 
together with the Pope Vigilius, with their customary spirit 
of independence, refused to sign it. Thereupon Vigilius 
was summoned to Constantinople, where he was detained 
for about seven years, during the first of which Theodora 
died. At length the pope so far submitted as to secretly 
promise Justinian that he would condemn "The Three 
Chapters." But when a synod of Western bishops was 
got together they could not be brought to a similar com- 
pliance. The emperor then issued a long profession of 
faith which he commanded the pope and his bishops to 
sign. This was an inordinate act of despotism, and poor 
Vigilius, in spite of his submission earlier, felt compelled to 
resist, and even threatened excommunication against all 
who should yield. But the vacillating pope was no Hilde- 
brand, and when soldiers were sent to arrest him he crept 
under the altar, whence he was being dragged out by his 
hair and beard when the outcries of shame from the people 
stopped the outrage, and he was allowed to escape to 
Chalcedon. 

Meanwhile summonses were out for a general council, 
which met at Constantinople in May 553, attended by 
165 bishops, including all the patriarchs of the East, but 
only five African bishops. This council, known as the 
Fifth General Council, condemned " The Three Chapters." ^ 
Vigilius, who had excused himself from attending, was 
terrified into submission to the decision of the council, 
after which he was permitted to return to Eome ; but the 
^ Mansi, ix. 376 ; Evagrius, ii. 38, 



120 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



miserable man died on the way, at Syracuse (a.d. 555) 
The bishops of Italy, Illyria, and Africa broke off from 
Eome because of the action of Yigilius, some of the churches 
they represented remaining aloof for nearly half a century. 

The council of Ephesus in its severe condemnation of 
Nestorianism had prepared the way for Eutyches, and so 
for Monophysitism ; the council of Chalcedon — acting under 
the influence of Eome — had condemned Eutychianism and 
thus apparently rather favoured its opposite, Nestorianism. 
Now the pendulum swung again. Undoubtedly this second 
council of Constantinople indicated a partial reaction against 
the council of Chalcedon, and a partial movement in the 
direction of Monophysitism. But it had more important 
issues in consolidating the Eastern Church and the authority 
of the emperor over it in opposition to the pretensions of 
Eome and the claims of the pope. This, and not the 
doctrinal decision, may be taken as the real note of the 
so-called " Fifth General Council." 

On one side the Monophysite position was now advanced 
a further stage. Eutyches, the originator of the whole 
movement, had maintained that Christ's body was not as 
our body ; that the transformation of the human nature in 
its combination with the Divine affected the body as well 
as the soul. Similarly, Dioscurus had asserted that it would 
be profane to speak of the blood of Christ as of the same 
substance with anything merely natural. In the later 
period Timothy ^lurus had held that Christ's humanity was 
different from ours. This was going further than Apollin- 
arianism, further than Patripassianism, a long way on 
towards Docetism. But a new quarrel broke out among 
the Monophysite refugees at Alexandria in regard to this 
question. It was Julian of Halicarnassus who now especi- 
ally developed and emphasised the doctrine of the incor- 
ruptibility of the body of Christ. He taught that it was 
insensible to natural passions and weaknesses, in opposition 
to Severus, the ex-patriarch of Antioch, who maintained 
that the body of Christ was corruptible up to the resurrec- 
tion, after which it became incorruptible. Julian contended 



THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 121 



that it underwent no change at the resurrection. His 
professed object was not to minimise the actual sufferings 
of Christ, but, as he argued, to exalt our conception of the 
great condescension of One who was naturally not liable 
to suffering in willingly accepting it for the sake of the 
redemption of the world. 

The discussion might have come and gone as an 
innocent pastime of the refugees, if it had not been for a 
high-handed act of interference in another quarter. As if 
he had not enough to occupy his attention in the great 
crisis of the empire brought on by his Gothic wars, Jus- 
tinian, always ready to meddle in Church affairs, plunged 
into this new dispute. While under the influence of 
Theodora, on whom he doted with an uxorious husband's 
infatuation for a sprightly young wife, he had yielded con- 
cessions to the Monophysites ; after her death (a.d. 548) 
he had treated them more coldly ; but in his later days he 
had again begun to favour them. Julian's views repre- 
sented extreme Monophysitism, and Justinian adopted those 
views. He went so far as to issue an elaborate statement 
affirming the incorruptibility of our Lord's body, which he 
required the bishops to accept. Here was an emperor's 
creed to be forced upon the Church by the power of the 
State, an intolerable piece of tyranny ! If this were sub- 
mitted to, it would be just to say that while the bishop of 
Eome was pope of the Western Church, the emperor was 
pope of the Eastern Church. In fact this action went 
beyond the normal papal pretensions. Even popes left 
it for councils to decide the creed of the Church ; but 
Justinian was usurping the function of an oecumenical 
council. Moreover, he was doing this in face of an excep- 
tionally divided ecclesiastical condition among his subjects. 
Not only was he siding with those whom the majority of 
his people regarded as heretics, but, in regard to a point 
on which those heretics were divided, he was taking a 
side, and that the side of the extremists. The emperor 
followed up his doctrinal statement with coercive measures ; 
for a despot's requirement of a creed is an edict ; it has 



122 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the force of law. He deposed Eutychius the patriarch of 
Constantinople for refusing compliance with the imperial 
theology. He threatened the noble Anastasius, patriarch 
of Antioch/ but assailing him, as Evagrius says, " like some 
impregnable tower.^ The timely death of the emperor 
(a.d. 565) put an end to further proceedings. 

Now, in order to understand the policy of Justinian in 
this matter, we must not credit the vacillating emperor with 
theological bigotry. The key to the imperial policy in the 
long Monophysite dispute is to be sought in statecraft. 
Before this last piece of presumption the emperor had 
repeatedly interfered in the doctrinal disputes of the Church, 
and more than once he had ventured on making his own 
will known concerning one side or the other. Several of 
his predecessors had set him an example for such actions. 
But in the main the imperial aim throughout had been 
what we should call to-day an Erastian comprehensiveness. 
In the West Justinian saw huge limbs of his empire being 
torn away by the Goths ; in the opposite direction he had 
to watch the rival power of Persia, ever on the alert to 
snatch at his Eastern provinces ; and now he had his sub- 
jects divided among themselves by a bitter feud. The 
orthodox found it an easy and congenial task to thunder 
anathemas against the heretics ; they felt no compunction 
in cutting them off from the Church. But the penalty of 
the close union of Church and State now obtaining in the 
Greek world was that this action was perilously like 
cutting them off from the State also, and so manufacturing 
rebels. No sovereign could take kindly to such a wilful 
disruption ; in the perilous times of Justinian it would be 
simply suicidal. Thus his policy naturally tended to the 
reconciliation of the Monophysites. In the earlier part of 
his reign he had assembled leaders of both parties with a 

^ According to Evagrius, "a man most accomplished in Divine learning," 
"accessible and affable," yet "so strict in his manners and mode of life, as 
to insist on very minute matters, and on no occasion to deviate from a staid 
and settled frame, much less in things of moment, " etc. {Hist. Eccl. iv. 40). 

2 Ibid, 



THE LATER CHRISTOLOGlCAL CONTROVERSIES l2o 



view to tlieir comiug to an agreement. It was an abortive 
conference ; such conferences usually are abortive when 
the question is doctrinal, however useful they may be when 
it is practical. It is true that the emperor's last action 
was not conciliatory ; it was to throw the apple of discord 
afresh among his people. Plainly this was a mistake. 
Justinian often acted foolishly. But his aim had been to 
bring even the extreme Monophysites into the communion 
of the main body of the Church. The blunder, of course, 
was that for this purpose he was attempting to convert 
this main body of the Church to an extreme form of the 
heresy in question. That is like ordering a whole line of 
troops to change its pace to the time of the awkward 
squad which is out of step. 

Justinian is best known to-day by the codification of 
Eoman law which bears his name. It does not fall within 
our province to discuss that grand achievement which 
determined the character of European jurisprudence for all 
future ages. But it should be noticed that ecclesiastical 
laws take their place in the system side by side with civil 
and legislative. Some of these laws date from the time 
of Constantine onward ; others are new edicts promul- 
gated by Justinian himself. But the bulk of the code 
consists of old laws handed down from ancient times. 
This fusion of civil and ecclesiastical legislation is a sign 
not only of the close identification of Church and State 
now obtaining in the empire, but also of the absolute 
supremacy of the latter over the former in the Eastern 
provinces of the empire. The spirit of independence in the 
West and the rival power of the popes kept the same 
tyranny out of the papal provinces. Perhaps this is the 
best thing that can be said for the papacy, and it is a very 
great and honourable thing to be able to say. If it had 
not been for the popes — especially the two greatest popes, 
Leo and Gregory — Western Christendom would have been 
in imminent danger of sharing the fate of Eastern Christen- 
dom, the whole Church crouching subservient at the foot- 
stool of the emperor. And yet this must not be said 



124 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



without qualification. While the popes were the chief 
champions of the Church's independence, the spirit of the 
Teuton in the West was very different from the spirit of 
the Eastern Greek and Armenian. Luther would have 
been equal to defying an imperial pope in his palace by 
the Bosphorus. 

II. The Monothelete controversy, even more wearisome 
and unprofitable than the Monophysite discussions, of 
which it was a continuation and a new refinement, belongs 
chronologically to the second division of the history, that 
which opens with the advent of Mohammedanism and 
other factors of medisevalism. Nevertheless, it is essen- 
tially a patristic subject ; its roots are altogether in the 
past ; it has no relations with the special problems of the 
new age. Logically, therefore, and in the classification of 
subjects, it must have its place in this first division as 
the last flickering flame of theological thought lingering 
after the blaze of light that distinguished the age of the 
great Fathers had faded away. Since here at length the 
long series of discussions about the nature of Christ comes 
to an end, it will be most fitting to see this conclusion of 
patristic Christology before passing on to other subjects. 

The Monophysites had contended that there was only 
one nature in Christ, the human and the Divine being 
fused together. Practically this meant that there was 
only the Divine nature, because the two did not meet on 
equal terms, and the overwhelming of the Finite by the 
Infinite left for our contemplation only the Infinite. Thus 
the Monophysite Christ was an Infinite Divine Person, who 
had drawn into His being our human nature, when He 
condescended to be born of Mary, and who had appeared 
under this veil of humanity, but who in His own con- 
sciousness and activity possessed and exercised all the 
faculties and powers of Divinity, and these only, not any 
borrowed from the human nature which He had completely 
absorbed and assimilated. This in fact, if not in verbal 
statement, was the ultimate issue af the Monophysite 
position. 



THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 125 



Now we must regard the Monothelete contention as 
historically a branch of the Monophysite. But it appeared 
as an irenicon, as a happy compromise granting to the 
orthodox their main requirements and yet opening a door 
for the heretics. According to this view Christ did possess 
two natures. He was not only of two natures, combining 
in His person the human and the Divine. He remained in 
two natures ; that is to say, He retained the two natures 
subsequent to the act of incarnation, all through His 
earthly life, and even after the resurrection, although that 
event resulted in a change in the condition of His body. 
But, according to the Monothelete, these two natures were 
so harmonised and blended in their co-operation that there 
was only one will in Christ, and that, of course, the Divine 
will. 

At first, however, the notion of the wills was not 
raised, and the controversy began with the question as 
to whether we are to affirm " one activity,"^ or " two 
activities," 2 as operative in Christ. Sergius, the patriarch 
of Constantinople, states that he and Cyrus the bishop of 
Phasis were consulted by the Emperor Heraclius about 
this question, showing that whatever had been its source 
it was now much interesting the emperor's mind. True 
to the traditional ecclesiastical policy of his predecessor, 
but with more vigour in the execution of it, Heraclius 
was anxious to establish a modus vivendi between the 
Monophysites and their opponents. Thus from the first 
Monotheletism appears as a political movement. It was 
the energetic Heraclius' proposed compromise for bringing 
together the two parties whose bitter mutual antagonism 
he saw to be a menace to the State. Sergius worked well 
to further his master's object. First, he had a synod to 
fortify him for his enterprise ; then he made good use of a 
collection of sayings of the Fathers supposed to favour the 
view of the one energy or operation, which was attributed 
to Mennas, patriarch of Constantinople under Justinian. 
At the third council of Constantinople (a.d. 680) this 



126 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



document was proved to be a forgery ; the Eoman legates 
pointed out a discrepancy of date, and the monk who had 
written it was discovered, dragged before the assembly 
and compelled to confess his guilt. But at its first 
appearance it was unquestioned. When Heraclius asked 
Sergius to supply him with testimony from the Fathers 
to the doctrine of the one activity, the patriarch sent him 
this precious fabrication. Cyrus also stood by the emperor 
and was rewarded by being promoted to the patriarchate 
of Alexandria (a.d. 630). Thus the two most influential 
patriarchates of the East were now in the hands of 
supporters of the new doctrine. But it was not to remain 
unchallenged. 

The great opponent of the Monothelete heresy was the 
monk Sophronius, who proved to be the ablest and most 
vigorous controversial theologian of his age, and who has 
since been classed with Athanasius and Cyril as one of the 
chief champions of the faith. It was no light matter to 
lead the opposition, not only against the patriarchates 
of Constantinople and Alexandria, but also against the 
imperial government. Sophronius had to undertake his 
crusade in opposition to the united forces of Church and 
State. Nevertheless he fearlessly accepted the challenge 
which Cyrus flung down, and fought well for the opposing 
position. Cyrus selected for his watchword a phrase in 
the pseudo-Dionysius writings. 

These writings, consisting of four treatises followed by 
some letters, were attributed in an uncritical age to St. 
Paul's convert, Dionysius the Areopagite. But we find no 
reference to them earlier than a conference at Constan- 
tinople in the reign of Justinian during the course of 
the Monophysite dispute (a.d. 532), when they were 
brought forward in favour of the heretical position. 
They cannot be much older than this period. If Cyril 
of Alexandria had known of them, surely he would 
have made use of the excellent weapons he could have 
found among them, exactly suited to his purpose. But 
when once in circulation; they were eagerly read and 



THE LATER CHRISTOLOQICAL CONTROVERSIES 127 



before long thej were made use of by all parties in sup- 
port of theii' several contentions. In course of time 
they came to take a high place in the estimation of 
the Church, so that we must regard them as among the 
chief formative influences that issued in mediaeval theology. 
In the West the papacy fed and fattened on them ; and 
there scholasticism drew from them its root ideas. In the 
East they profoundly affected the final shaping of orthodoxy 
under the hands of the last of the Fathers, John of 
Damascus. The pseudo-Dionysiac writings are of a 
mystical character, and in them we find Christian theology 
intermingled with Neo-Platonic thought.^ 

Cyrus's watchword, borrowed from " Dionysius," was 
the phrase " one Divine-human activity." ^ Sophronius 
thought this a dangerous expression detracting from the 
humanity of Christ and bringing back the old error of 
Apollinaris. When Cyrus showed him a document asserting 
this single activity in Christ, Sophronius was so deeply 
moved that he flung himself at the patriarch's feet 
beseeching him by the sufferings of Christ not to impose 
such teaching on the Church. But his entreaty had no 
effect; the new position was welcomed with enthusiasm 
by a number of Monophysites, who thus became reconciled 
to the Church. It would seem for the moment that the 
policy of Heraclius was proving itself to be brilliantly 
successful. But this was only the beginning of the 
contest. The new Athanasius was not to be daunted. 
Finding his appeal to Cyrus of no avail, Sophronius went 
to Constantinople and laid an urgent plea before Sergius. 
This patriarch, an abler politician than his brother of 
Alexandria, saw the danger of the situation. The wand 
of peace was being converted into a battle standard. 
Accordingly Sergius endeavoured to suppress the contro- 
versy. At the same time he expostulated with Sophronius 

Migne, Patrol. Gr. iii., iv. ; Westcott, "Dionysius the Areopagite," 
CoTitemp. Review, May 1867 ; Kanakis, Dionys. der Areop., nach seinem 
Character als Philosoph (Leipz. 1881) ; Moller in " Herzog." 
^ fua deavdpiKT] ipepyeia. 



128 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

for hindering the return of thousands now separated from 
the Church, with so much earnestness that the good man 
promised to remain silent. But when three or four years 
later he was made patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius did 
not consider the seal of silence any longer binding on 
him. The situation was entirely altered. In his position 
of influence he felt it his duty to speak out. So he gathered 
a synod which pronounced definitely for two wills and two 
activities. Unfortunately he stated the result of this 
decision in such a lengthy, bombastic document, that, 
before he could get copies of it sent round to the leading 
bishops, Sergius was able to present his views to the Pope 
Honorius, who never suspected the cloven hoof, and in 
his simplicity pronounced in favour of the essential 
Monothelete position. The pope's view was that there 
were two natures, each working its own way — therefore 
not with only one activity — but still under the control 
of one will. 

This brings us to the second stage of the controversy. 
Never did a pope commit himself to heresy with a more 
innocent intention. But in point of fact not only did 
Honorius fall into what the Church was afterwards to 
condemn as a heresy ; he even originated this heresy in 
the final shape which it assumed. Hitherto there has 
only been a question of one activity. Now, Honorius 
introduces the idea of the one will. Sophronius only 
lived two or three years after this; but shortly be- 
fore his death, since the Mohammedan invasion then 
prevented him from leaving Palestine, he led Stephen 
the bishop of Dore to the site of Calvary, and there 
solemnly adjured him by the sufferings of Christ and 
the prospect of the final judgment to go to Kome 
and never rest till he had obtained from the apostolical 
See a condemnation of the doctrine of the single will in 
Christ. 

In the year 638 Heraclius followed the unfortunate 
example of his predecessors and attempted to settle the 
theological dispute by imperial authority. At the suggestion 



THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 129 



of Sergius he issued an edict entitled Ecthesis ^ — an 
Exposition of the faith. This was intended as a pacific 
regulation. It forbade the use of the word " activity " ^ 
in connection with the whole subject, and expressly pro- 
hibited the assertion of two activities as leading to the idea 
of two wills, which might be contrary one to the other. 
Thus it was distinctly Monothelete ; it took the notion of 
the one will for granted. The Edhesis was approved by 
councils at Constantinople, under Sergius and his successor 
Pyrrhus, and at Alexandria, under Cyrus — which was to 
be expected since these were now the two Monothelete 
centres. The other two Eastern patriarchates — which 
would have taken the opposite view — were silent. An awful 
calamity had overtaken them. The cities of Antioch and 
Jerusalem were now both in the hands of the Arabs ; the 
Mohammedan wave of conquest had swept over Syria 
and Palestine. The new pope John condemned the 
document. Thus the papacy was purged of heresy. Then 
Heraclius was alarmed. These were not times for 
quarrelling with so powerful a man as the chief personage 
in the West. The one object of his ecclesiastical policy 
had been the consolidation of his empire in face of the 
devastating flood of Mohammedanism. The irony of 
history is rarely more apparent than in this dividing of 
Christendom on fine and yet finer points of doctrine at 
the very moment when its very existence is at stake. 
It is like the suicidal folly of the Jews at Jerusalem in 
carrying on civil war among themselves while the Eoman 
legions were at their gates. Heraclius saw the danger 
and wrote at once to the pope disowning the unfortunate 
edict and throwing the blame of it on poor Sergius. 

Ten years later (a.d. 648) Constantine iv., the grandson 
of Heraclius, issued another mandatory document which was 
called the Type? that is to say, the model of faith.* This 
was less theological than the Edhesis^ and entirely neutral 
in tone. It forbade further discussion on the question of 

• 6 TiOvoi irepl iriarews. * Mansi, x. 1030. 

9 



130 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



one will or two wills, and commanded all parties to 
be satisfied with the statements of Scripture and the 
decrees of the five general councils. It then formally 
repeated the Ecthesis\ and it concluded with a scale of 
penalties for disobedience — degradation for clerics, con- 
fiscation of goods for laymen of the upper classes, flogging 
for those of lower station. The tyranny of this forcible 
silencing of discussion was quite in harmony with the 
methods of the empire. 

Undoubtedly it was high time that some final step was 
taken if interference by the State was to be submitted 
to at all. Theodore the pope of Eome excommunicated 
Paul the patriarch of Alexandria. Paul retaliated by 
overthrowing the altar of the papal chapel at Con- 
stantinople and insulting the pope's envoys. The next 
year Theodore died, and Martin, one of these envoys, was 
elected to succeed him. The new pope summoned a synod 
at Eome, since known as the " First Lateran Council," 
which condemned Monotheletism, anathematised the leading 
supporters of the heresy, and denounced " the most impious 
JSdhesis" and " the most impious Type" For this Martin 
was arrested by the emperor's Western representative, the 
Exarch, carried off to Constantinople, rudely handled, and 
flung into prison more dead than aHve. After suffering 
six months incarceration, and being subject to repeated 
trials, the pope was banished to Cherson in the Crimea, 
where he died (a.d. 655).^ The next most prominent 
opponent of Monotheletism was Maximus, a member of a 
noble family. He and two other champions of the orthodox 
cause were dragged from Eome to Constantinople, first 
punished by having their tongues and right hand& cut off, 
and then driven into exile. 

At last this disastrous controversy was brought to a 
close by a decision of the sixth general council — the third 
council of Constantinople — which the Emperor Constantine 
Pognatus assembled in the imperial city on the 7th of Novem- 

^ There is a graphic account of Martin's cruel sufferings in the letter 
of an unnamed writer, entitled Commemoratio eorum qua sceviteff etc 



THE LATER CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES 131 

ber, A.D. 680. Its proceedings were conducted with unusual 
decency and impartiality. The emperor presided during 
most of the sessions, and when he happened to be absent 
the presidential chair was left unoccupied. This council 
condemned Monotheletism, and even anathematised Pope 
Honorius for sanctioning " the impious doctrines " of Sergius. 
The heresy enjoyed a temporary revival during the brief 
reign of the adventurer Philippicus, who publicly burnt the 
original copy of the Acts of the Council. But his death 
was followed by its rapid extinction. After this it only 
lingered on among the Maronites of Lebanon till they came 
under the protection of the papacy, with which they are 
now in alliance. Originated with the sole object of estab- 
lishing peace and union, it had been a source of discord 
from first to last. The reason of its failure is palpable. It 
was an olive branch presented on the point of a sword. 
Such a peace-offering could only provoke war. 



CHAPTEE IX 

ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 

(a) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers ; Fulton, Index Ganonum ; The 

Apostolical Constitutions; The Canons of Athanasius ; The 
Codes of TJieodosius and Justinian. 

(b) Bingham, Antiquities ; Smith, Dictionanj of Antiquities ; Allen, 

Christian Institutions (I.T.L.) ; Stanley, Christian Institu- 
tions, 1881. 

The Church which had commenced as a simple brotherhood 
of Christians had now developed into a highly elaborated 
hierarchical organisation. Genuine Christianity with hope 
of future salvation was taken to be conterminous with 
membership in the Catholic Church. This membership 
was secured by baptism, and continued subject to discipline. 
Orthodoxy in belief and tolerable correctness of conduct 
were recognised conditions, failure in regard to either of 
which could be punished with excommunication — specifically 
exclusion from attendance at the Eucharist. But in point 
of fact discipline was almost confined to the question of 
orthodoxy, and there almost exclusively among the clergy ; 
so that much laxity of conduct prevailed among the laity, 
who, though subject to pastoral oversight, rarely suffered 
the extreme penalty of expulsion from the Church. In 
other words, from being a select community dedicated to a 
holy life, the Church tended to become co-extensive with 
Christendom, especially with the empire regarded as Chris- 
tian, though of course only consisting of the baptised. 
Then those men and women who aimed at a higher life 
began to separate themselves from the secularised Church. 
Yet they did not form a church within the Church. They 

132 



ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 



133 



lived the life of ascetics, either separately or in communities. 
These people — as we shall see in the next chapter — largely 
escaped from ecclesiastical discipline. The monks to a 
great extent shook off the yoke of the bishops. 

The centre of this hierarchical system was the bishop ; 
the lower clergy were his ministers ; the higher clergy were 
but bishops of important cities with extended authority 
over their brother bishops. Episcopacy was the essential 
characteristic of the Church organisation. 

The clergy were drawn from all ranks of life. No 
special training was considered necessary to fit them for 
their duties, and some came direct from secular work to 
administer the affairs of the Church. In the smaller cities 
bishops carried on businesses for their livelihood — as farmers, 
shepherds, shopkeepers, etc. It was expressly ordered that a 
bishop should not neglect his flock by travelling out of his 
parish for business purposes, take interest for loans, or 
lower the wages of his workpeople. But where the funds 
of a Church were sufficient to support its bishop his 
engagement in secular affairs was discouraged. Thus we 
read in the Canons of Athanasius : " thou levitical priest, 
wherefore dost thou sell or buy ? Unto thee are given the 
first-fruits of all," etc.^ So lucrative did the post become 
that in some cases it was sought for the sake of its emolu- 
ments ; 2 and the bishops had to be warned that the money 
at their disposal should be used for the assistance of widows 
and orphans or as loans to other persons in need.^ The 
council of Chalcedon expressly forbade bishops, priests, and 
monks to engage in commerce.^ During the fourth century 
it was taken for granted that the bishop was a married 
man. Thus in the Canons of Athanasius, the Pauline 
precept is repeated that " the bishop must be in all things 
blameless, married to one wife," etc. ; ^ and again, " The 

^ Canons of Athanasius, iii. The probable genuineness of these Canons 
has been vindicated by Mr. Grumm, who has clearly demonstrated their 
antiquity. 

^ Ibid. V. 2 Ibid. vi. Can&ns of Chalcedon^ iii. 

^ Canons of Athanasius, v. 



134 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



priests must behave themselves according as the apostles 
have ordained; wherefore the bishop must be in nothing 
blameworthy, married to one wife," etc.^ Gregory of 
Nazianzus's father was the bishop of that town. Of course 
the case of monks who became bishops was different. 

While a college training was not considered to be 
essential as a preparation for the ministry, the more famous 
bishops were highly educated men. Literary culture was 
acquired at Csesarea, Alexandria, Constantinople, and above 
all at Athens ; theological training was taken after this 
in one of the great schools of theology, at Alexandria, 
Antioch, or Edessa. The canonical age for the priesthood 
or a bishopric was thirty. One of the Sardican canons (a.d. 
346, 347) ordered that if a rich man or a lawyer were 
proposed as bishop he should not be appointed till he had 
ascended by degrees through the offices of reader, deacon, 
and priest, and that he should spend a considerable time in 
each grade of the ministry. But this rule of caution was 
frequently set aside, and candidates were hurried through 
the inferior orders when their appointment was urgent. 
The bishops were supposed to be elected by their con- 
gregations ; but more often they were designated by the 
metropolitans of their provinces, with the co-operation of 
the neighbouring bishops. While the priesthood of the 
clergy was now universally recognised, their social separation 
from the laity was a slow and gradual process. At first 
they wore no distinctive vestments. By the beginning of 
the fifth century some among them began to don clothing 
of a more sober hue than was fashionable at the time. So 
they appeared as the Puritans or Quakers among the gay 
society people of their day. Jerome condemned this distinc- 
tion of dress. The sixth century saw the invention of the 
tonsure. The clergy were now forbidden to wear the long 
hair of the dandies of their day. The unmarried clergy 
lived together under the eye of their bishop and slept in a 
common dormitory. 

The bishop presides over his own church and also the 

^ Canons of Athanasius, vi. 



ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 



135 



surrounding district, which is known in the East as a 
" parish," not a " diocese " — that word being applied 
pohtically to a large division of the empire. It is 
his function to appoint and ordain the lower clergy. He 
is treasurer of the Church funds and custodian of her 
doctrine and discipline. It is the voice of the bishops 
that settles both the creed and the canons of discipline in 
the synods. Bishops have certain privileges and immuni- 
ties. They are not to be sworn in courts of justice ; 
they can act as intercessors ; they preside at Church courts. 
Each bishop is strictly confined to his own parish. We 
meet with neither a plurality of bishops in one such 
district, nor with the pluralism which disgraced the 
Western Church in later times when one prelate enjoyed a 
host of Church dignities. That was expressly forbidden at 
Chalcedon.^ 

The unity of the Church is mainly preserved by the 
intercommunication between the bishops and their meeting 
together in local synods or larger councils. These synods 
and councils are not held in our modern Presbyterian 
style at regular intervals for the transaction of normal 
business, at all events at first. They are special 
expedients resorted to on occasion for the settlement of 
difficulties. But the council of Chalcedon ordered that 
synods should meet twice a year.^ While the oecumenical 
councils were always summoned by the emperor, local 
synods were called together by the bishops of the chief 
churches in the districts concerned. 

The bishop of the principal city in a province is 
known as the " metropolitan," and he corresponds to the 
archbishop of a province in the West. The specific 
functions of the metropolitan are to act with the other 
bishops of his province in ordaining bishops — his consent 
being deemed essential to a valid election ; to exercise 
supervision over the bishops and take action where discipline 
was needed ; to summon and preside at synods ; to com- 
municate the decisions of synods to the other metropolitans. 
^ Canon x. ' Canon xix. 



136 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Lastly, we have the patriarchs, higher even than the 
metropolitans, with corresponding duties, namely, to ordain 
one another and the metropolitans; to exercise supreme 
supervision and discipline over their section of the Church ; 
to preside at the larger synods and oecumenical councils ; to 
communicate with one another and co-operate for the unity 
and harmony of the Church, not however as a joint com- 
mittee of government, since in the last resort each is 
independent in his own sphere ; to serve as the link of 
connection with the State, communicating with the emperor 
and the civil government. 

In this way we see all the parts of the Catholic Church 
linked together, while a considerable amount of home rule 
is permitted for the individual bishops. The lower clergy 
are directly responsible to their own bishops. While free 
and independent under normal conditions, these bishops are 
bound by the canons of the councils, and it is for them especi- 
ally that the creed is authorised ; since they are the custodians 
of orthodoxy their own orthodoxy is a matter of supreme 
concern. Thus in the main theological controversy is a 
battle of bishops. At critical times, in special emergencies, 
the metropolitans may have to interfere with the bishops 
of their provinces ; and in great affairs affecting the whole 
Church or branches of it the patriarchs take action. 

Most of this system was developed during ante-Mcene 
times. The one feature which becomes specially prominent 
in the later period is the patriarchata There were five 
patriarchs. Of these only one was in the West — the 
patriarch of Kome. The others were at Jerusalem, Antioch, 
Alexandria, and Constantinople. The bishop of Kome 
presided over the Italian and Gallican prsefectures ; but 
Milan and Eavenna — being in turn imperial capitals — as 
well as.North Africa, long clung to their independence. The 
patriarch of Jerusalem was exceptional. He only presided 
over a very small area, holding his post of dignity in deference 
to the sanctity of his city. The patriarch of Antioch had 
charge of the fifteen provinces contained in Syria, Cilicia, 
Arabia, and Mesopotamia ; the patriarch of Alexandria was 



ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 



137 



set over the nine provinces of Egypt ; the patriarch of 
Constantinople had as many as twenty- eight provinces 
under his control, contained in the three imperial dioceses 
of Pontus, Thrace, and Asia Minor. 

At the time of the council of Nicsea there were only 
three patriarchs — those at Eome, Antioch, and Alexandria. 
Though the first place was allowed to Eome, they were 
regarded as essentially equals, in recognition of an established 
custom. Canon vi. begins as follows : " Let the ancient 
custom prevail in Egypt, Lybia, and Pentapolis ; so that the 
bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these provinces, 
since this is customary^ for the bishop of Eome also. 
Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the 
churches retain their prerogatives." Constantinople was 
not then existing ; the building of that city was only 
commenced five years after the council (a.d. 330). Half 
a century later the patriarchate of the new imperial capital 
is not only recognised in the second oecumenical council — 
the council of Constantinople (a.d. 381); but it is set 
higher than its seniors in the East and associated in a 
sort of double primacy with that of Eome. The third 
canon of this council runs as follows : " The bishop of 
Constantinople shall have the prerogative of rank next 
after the bishop of Eome ; because Constantinople is new 
Eome." 2 

The Greeks commonly interpret this canon as implying 
no inferiority for their own city by giving a temporal sense 
to the preposition /xera. In itself that interpretation 
might seem strained ; but it appears to be confirmed by 
the less ambiguous language of a later council. The 
council of Chalcedon (a.d. 451), in Canon xxviii., when 
referring to " the prerogatives of the most holy church 
of Constantinople, new Eome," decrees as follows: "For 

^ TovTo avvridk^ ?(rTtu, i.e. this sort of thing, a similar arrangement is 
customary. 

^ rbv [x^v TOL KojvffTavTivovTrSXeus iirlcrKOTrop e'xeiJ' rd irpecr^eTa rrjs ri/xijs /xerA 
Tbu TTjS 'Pw/x?;? iTTLCTKOTrop, 8ia TO eluai avTrjv peav ''P(J}jxr}U. This is confirmed 
by Socrates, Hist. Eccl. v. 8 ; and Sozomen, Hi^. Eccl. vii. 9. 



138 THB GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the Fathers rightly granted prerogatives to the throne of 
the elder Kome, because that city was the capital.^ And 
the 150 most religious bishops, actuated by the same 
design, assigned equal prerogatives ^ to the most holy 
throne of new Eome, justly judging that the city which 
is honoured with the sovereignty of the Senate, and 
enjoys equal privileges with the elder imperial Eome, 
should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is, 
and rank next after her."^ Here we have the same 
ambiguity in the use of the preposition fxerd ; but in this 
case following unambiguous terms of equality. Surely 
the not very difficult reconciliation of the two forms of 
expression is that Eome is simply regarded as primus inter 
pares. The two patriarchs are really equal in rank ; but 
a certain precedence is given to the bishop of Eome, for in 
this case the temporal sense of jutera is scarcely allowable. 

Two facts of importance should be noted here. First, 
the essential equality of the patriarchs of Eome and Con- 
stantinople ; second, the purely political grounds of this 
equality. It is the imperial rank of the new city that 
gives dignity to its bishop. New Eome has no St. Peter, 
no power of the keys ; she is supported in case of necessity 
by something very different from that mystical privilege — 
by the power of the sword. Thus from the beginning we 
see the Erastianism of the church at Constantinople. 

At first the rivalry with distant Eome was not felt. 
It was Alexandria that resented the honours accorded to 
the upstart patriarchate. We have seen how the theological 
controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries were 
entangled with personal jealousies of the patriarchs of 
Alexandria and Constantinople, and when very pronounced, 
with the more widespread rivalry of the cities they 
presided over. Subsequently they developed into national 
and racial divisions, the Copts of Egypt standing opposed 
to the Greeks of Constantinople. Antioch was not so 

^ di&. rb ^aaCKe^eiv rrjv ir6\LV iKdvqv. ^ rb. Xaa irpecrpeia. 

^ Kal iv Tols iKKXrjaiaariKois u>s iKelvrjv fieyaMuea-Oat irpdyixa<n devripav fxer 
iKelvrjv {nrdpxov(rav. 



ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 



139 



directly concerned with this deadly feud between the two 
rival Western patriarchates. While they were in constant 
communication by that highway of commercial traffic, the 
Mgean Sea, the Syrian capital lay back in the East. Still, 
she had her old differences with Alexandria, and she was 
more directly associated with Constantinople, so that she 
more often sided with the imperial patriarchate. 

In the year 550 Justinian conferred on the patriarch of 
Constantinople the privilege of receiving appeals from the 
other patriarchs. By this time, backed up by the power of 
the autocrat, the bishop of the chief city of the empire was 
threatening to become a veritable pope, in our later sense of 
the title. It would have needed rare prescience then to have 
discerned that not Constantinople, but Eome, was destined to 
develop the monstrous assumption of universal supremacy 
over the Church. It looked as though that city of ruins, 
neglected by the emperor, subject to the ravages of successive 
invaders, pillaged and impoverished, were doomed to decay, 
if not to extinction, with her episcopal See and all its 
Petrine claims. Meanwhile the brilliant metropolis on 
the Bosphorus, with its basilicas and palaces, its wealth, 
its splendour, its luxury, promised not only to take 
the first place politically and socially — which indeed it 
had already done most effectually — but also to secure 
ecclesiastical primacy. Nobody could then have dreamed 
of the proud triumphs of a Hildebrand. But the Latin 
Church never did dominate Constantinople except at a 
much later period, and then only for a brief interval and 
by brute force. 

The rivalry between the two patriarchs came to an 
acute crisis before the end of the sixth century. Fortun- 
ately for the Western Church one of the greatest of all the 
popes was then seated in the chair of Peter. This was 
Gregory the Great — the missionary pope to whose zeal 
South England owes the light of the gospel. He was also 
the Italian patriot who saved Eome from the Lombards 
when the miserable Exarch at Eavenna had hopelessly 
failed to repel the rude invaders. Thus he followed in 



140 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the brilliant tradition of his greatest predecessor, Leo I., 
the almost miraculous saviour of Kome from the Huns. 
Further, Gregory is reckoned the last of the Latin Fathers. 
If not an original theologian, still he struck the keynote 
of mediaeval theology, and left in his works almost all the 
doctrinal notions that prevailed during the Middle Ages. 
This remarkable, many-sided man now came forward as the 
champion of the Church's liberty, rebuking the lofty claims 
of his brother at Constantinople. 

Gregory had been to the imperial city at an earlier 
time on the bootless errand of seeking the aid of the 
emperor's troops to defend Kome from the Northern 
invaders. When there he had witnessed the elevation of 
a famous ascetic, "John the Faster," to the patriarchal 
dignity. No accusation has been made against the char- 
acter of this patriarch, who was said to be personally 
humble and unambitious. But he put forth the highest 
claims for his office, claims which were all the more 
dangerous because they were detached from his own 
individuality and urged with a sense of loyalty to his 
Church. In summoiung a synod at Constantinople in the 
year 588 to settle the affairs of the Church at Antioch, 
John assumed the title of " Universal Archbishop." ^ 
Gregory was indignant at what he regarded as the pre- 
tensiousness of the title. " I hope in Almighty God," he 
cried, " that the Supreme Majesty will confound his hypo- 
crisy." ^ He sent to the offending patriarch what in 
writing to the emperor he called "a sweet and humble 
admonition," in which, as he said, " honesty and kindness 
were combined," ^ but promising an appeal to the Church if 
this failed. Gregory also wrote to the Emperor Maurice 
urging that the title of " Universal Bishop " was novel and 
unheard of, and a contravention of the precepts of the 
gospel which enjoin humility, and further, that it deprived 
the other patriarchs and bishops of the honour due to 
them.* In both these letters he claimed that the title had 



^ otKov/xevtKbs ipxieTria-Koiros. 
3 Bpp. V. 18. 



2 Gregory tlie Great, -^j?. v. 45. 
* Epp, V. 20. 



ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 141 



been offered by the council of Chalcedon to the bishop of 
Eome, but never used by him. That, as Gieseler points out, 
was a mistake — in the way Gregory understood it — for 
the title had only been used generally for all patriarchs.^ 

This incident has been pointed to as an instance of 
papal aggressiveness, and Gregory has been accused of. 
priestly pride and ambition. But such a view is neither 
charitable nor just. It is true that he uses strong language 
in his expostulation ; but patriarchs were accustomed to 
write to one another with moral fervour and in a tone of 
authoritativeness when they believed that they had the 
judgment of the Church at their back. Gregory made no 
direct claim for himself or his office. The curious fact is 
that when the title " Universal Bishop " was first appropri- 
ated, this was not by the pope of Eome, but by the pope of 
Constantinople, and that the Eoman patriarch rebuked his 
brother, not for seizing a title that he used himself — 
though he hinted that it had been offered to a predecessor 
— but for adopting one that no bishop had a right to hold, 
since it was derogatory to his fellow-bishops. Gregory here 
furnishes the opponents of the papacy with admirable argu- 
ments to be used against the monstrous claims of later 
occupants of his own See. 

Side by side with the deyelopment of the organisation 
of the Church there went on the increasing elaboration of 
its rites and ceremonies. In the conduct of worship various 
functions were assigned to the different orders of the clergy, 
according to their places in the ascending scale of the hier- 
archy. In the town churches the bishops were at the head 
of their own congregations taking the leading part of the 
solemn functions, and, as a rule, preaching to their people. 
The whole ceremony of the worship centred in the Eucharist. 
This was known as " the mystery " ^ 'par excellence. It is a 
highly significant fact that, while the Eoman Christian, 
\^'ith his respect for law and authority, called the chief 

* Gieseler, Eccl. Hist., 2nd Period, 1st Div. ch. iii. § 94, note 72, 
^ rh fivari^piov. 



142 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



office of his religion a Sacrament} or oath of allegiance, his 
Greek brother used a word that was already familiar to the 
people as the title of a secret ritual witnessed only by the 
initiated and carefully guarded from the intrusion of 
the vulgar. Thus the word, which in the New Testament 
always means a truth formerly hidden, but now through 
Christ publicly revealed,^ came to be torn entirely away from 
its primitive Christian signification and used altogether in 
its conventional pagan sense. Meanwhile there was a grow- 
ing approximation to pagan ritual in the ceremonials of the 
Church and the feelings of awe with which they were 
approached. The homely love feast, at which rich and poor 
sit down to a common meal side by side, while they com- 
memorate their Lord's death by eating and drinking some 
of the bread and wine or milk provided for it, has given 
place to a solemn function of miraculous potency. Baptism 
precedes the right to share in this tremendous mystery, as 
an ablution is necessary for those about to be initiated in 
the secret rites of Demeter at Eleusis. The priest at the 
altar is regarded as performing a really efficacious act. 
Although as yet the doctrine of the real presence is not form- 
ally and officially pronounced and authorised by the Church, . 
it is now very generally held and very distinctly taught. 

It is in the fourth century that we see the mystical 
character of the body of Christ so treated as plainly to 
involve the doctrine of transubstantiation, although the 
notion has to wait long for official definition and confirma- 
tion as a dogma of the Church. It had been adumbrated 
in still more ancient times. Even as early as the first half 
of the second century we have Ignatius using ecstatic 
language about the body and blood of Christ that faintly 
foreshadows the idea which is destined to become the 
central factor of the Catholic faith.^ The Alexandrian 
teachers 'Clement and Origen are satisfied with the 
symbolical meaning of the communion ; and so is Eusebius 
in the fourth century, as when he refers to " the memory " * 

* Soxrainentum. ' e.g. 1 Cor. xv. 51 ; Col. i. 26. 

• e.g. Ignatius, Epist, to Horn. vii. * ttjv jxvT^fjLrjp. 



ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 



143 



of Christ's sacrifice, " by symbols ^ both of His body and of 
His saving blood." ^ On the other hand, Athanasius shows 
signs of mystical ideas attached to the elements, especially 
as the sources of immortality by their effects on our bodies 
when we participate. Thus he speaks of " the holy altar, 
and on it bread of heaven, and immortal, and that giveth 
life to all that partake of it, His holy and all-holy body " ; ^ 
and yet in another place he says that the very object of the 
ascension was to draw men away from the thought of eating 
the body.* Evidently we are here at a transition stage. 
Some minds go further than others, and the same mind 
oscillates between the symbolical and the mystical concep- 
tions. 

Basil dwells on the peculiar sanctity of the communion 
and the benefit of daily participation in it ; but he is far 
from ascribing to it a merely magical efficacy irrespective 
of intelligent ideas. Thus he says, " In no respect does he 
benefit who comes to the communion without understanding 
the word according to which the participation of the body 
and the blood of the Lord is given. But he that partakes 
unworthily is condemned " ; ^ and again, more definitely, 
" What is the peculiar benefit of those that eat the bread 
and drink the cup of God ? To keep the continual 
memory ^ of Him that died for us and rose again.*' ^ 

But now when we turn to Basil's brother, Gregory of 
Nyssa, we find a very different tone. Gregory was an 
enthusiastic Platonist and Origenist. Here however he 
entirely departs from the simple symbolism of the Alex- 
andrian school. We are sometimes told that the dogma of 
transubstantiation dates from the Fourth Lateran Council, 
as late as the thirteenth century. That is true as regards 
the authoritative enforcement of acceptance of it on the 
papal Church, although Berengar had been condemned 

^ 5(4 <Tvp.^6\wv, * Demonst. Evang. i. 

* De Nicceno Con. c. Arium, p. 125, in Hebert, The Lord's Supper, vol. i. 
p. 154. 

* Ihid. p. 156. Ibid. p. 194. r-qv fjLVjfi/xrju tpvXdaaeiv dirjyeKrj. 
Hebert, Lord's Supper, vol. i. p. 193. 



144 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



more than a century earlier (a.d. 1059) for denying it. 
The mediaeval schoolmen were the first to attempt meta- 
physical explanations of the doctrine. But the essential 
idea appears full blown as early as the fourth century, and 
to nobody is the formulation of it more distinctly attributable 
than to Gregory of Nyssa. This daring and original Church 
Father writes, " The body of Christ was transmuted ^ to the 
flesh of God by the indwelling of God the Word. I do 
well then in believing that now also the bread of God the 
Word, when consecrated, is being transmuted ^ into the body 
of God the Word." ^ Together with this notion of transub- 
stantiation Gregory also has the idea of miraculous effects 
produced by the Divine food on the persons of the recipients 
of the communion. Thus he says, " For as a little leaven, 
as the apostle says, changes and assimilates the whole 
lump to itself ; so the body of Christ which was by God 
put to death, having come to be in our body, transmutes 
and transfers it all into its own character. For as when 
the destructive agent * was mingled with the sound (body), 
all that it was mingled with was made worthless with it, so 
the immortal body also, having come to be in him that has 
received it, transmuted the whole also into its own nature. 
But indeed it is not possible for anything to come to be in 
the body except it be well mixed with the bowels by being 
eaten and drunk. Surely then it is requisite to receive, in 
the way possible to our nature, the power of the Spirit that 
is to quicken us."^ We can scarcely conceive of a more 
grossly materialistic notion of the use of the Sacrament. 
But we must observe all along that it is a materialistic end 
the theologian has in view. The body of Christ is so 
to transmute the body of the communicant that it shall 
survive the shock of death and be capable of resurrection. 
Thus the eating and drinking of the Eucharistic elements 
by the Christian is supposed to secure for his body what 
the Egyptian aimed at by the art of embalming, what the 



* fierairon^dn]. 

» Hebert, p. 266. 

• Hebert, pp. 204, 205. 



^ IxeTairouta 6 ai. 

^ i.e. Sin, as the context shows. 



ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP 



145 



Pharaohs would make doubly sure with granite sarcophagus 
and massive pyramid. 

What Gregory of Nyssa laboured to expound and en- 
force was accepted and popularly preached by Chrysostom, 
and it became henceforth the normal doctrine of the Church. 
The West was not slow to adopt the same ideas. We have 
movements towards them in the writings of Hilary; and 
Ambrose tells strange things of the magical efficacy of the 
sacred elements. Still, with this doctrine which meant so 
much for the Latin Church in all subsequent ages, as with 
so many other doctrines, it was the Greek theologians who 
first gave definite expression to it. Nevertheless, belief in 
transubstantiation did not make way without difficulties 
and objections in some quarters. For instance, Palladius 
tells of an old monk near Scetis who much distressed two 
of his comrades by being unable to accept it. They 
agreed to pray for a week that the doubter might be 
enlightened. " And the Lord hearkened to both," says 
Palladius. " And when the week was fulfilled they came 
on the Lord's Day to the church, and the three stood 
together alone on one seat, and the old man was in the 
middle. And their eyes were opened, and when the bread 
was placed on the holy table, it appeared to the three only 
as a child, and when the presbyter stretched out his hand 
to break the bread, lo ! an angel of the Lord came down 
from heaven with a sword and slew the child as a sacrifice,^ 
and emptied its blood into the cup. But when the pres- 
byter brake the bread into small portions, the angel also 
began to cut out of the child small portions ; and as they 
drew near to partake of the holy things there was given, 
to the old man alone, bleeding flesh ; and he cried out, 
saying, ' I believe. Lord, that the bread is Thy body and 
the cup Thy blood.' And straightway the flesh in his hand 
became bread according to the mystery, and he partook, 
giving thanks to God. And the old men say to him, 
* God knew man's nature, that it cannot eat raw flesh, and 
on this account transmuted ^ the body into bread and His 

^ idv<X€. 2 fJLeTeirolijffe, 

lO 



146 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

blood into wine for them that receive in faith.' And they 
gave thanks to God concerning the old man that he did 
not lose his labours ; and the three went with joy into 
their cells." ^ Here it is plain enough that Berengarius, 
Wycliffe, and the Eeformers had been anticipated by the 
old sceptical monk. The interesting point in the story is 
that his doubts were dispelled by a vision in answer to 
prayer. This must be taken in conjunction with the many 
other monkish marvels with which Palladius fills his pages. 
No unprejudiced person can read the story without being 
convinced of the sincerity and genuine devoutness of these 
three simple-minded monks. It carries us beyond the 
plain paths of history to obscure regions of psychology, 
and there we must be content to leave it. 

1 Hebert, vol. i. pp. 329, 330. 



CHAPTER X 



EASTERN MONASTICISM 

(a) The Booh of Paradise, by Palladius, etc., trans, by E. A. Wallis 
Budge ; Nicene and Post - Nicene Fathers ; Socrates, Hist. 
Eccl. iv. 23 ; Sozomen, Hist. Ecd. i. 12-14 ; iii. 14 ; vi. 
28-34 ; Evagrius, Hist. Ecd. iv. 33-35 ; vi. 23, 24 ; Siil- 
picius Severus, Dialog, i. 

(6) ZocMer, Kritische Geschichte der Askek, 1863 ; Texts and Studies, 
vi., Dom Cuthbert Butler, " The Lausiac History of Pal- 
ladius"; Harnack, Monasticismy 1901; QtiMhoii, Dedine and 
Fall, chap, xxxvii. 

We have seen that in the region of thought it v^as the 
Eastern branch of the Church that developed theology and 
settled the creed of Christendom. Now v^e have to 
observe how in matters of practice and conduct it was 
this same Oriental district that shaped the ideal and ad- 
vanced farthest towards its attainment. After the early 
days of joyous liberty, not only during the patristic period, 
but right through the Middle Ages, asceticism is synonymous 
with sanctity for the bulk of the Church, both Eastern and 
Western. Now and again there appears a mystic, out of 
all relation to time and circumstance, as by its nature 
mysticism always is ; and then we have a flash of hght on 
the spirituality of religion realised by practical love. But 
iQ the main, the ideal of the Christian life all down the ages 
involved on one side renunciation of the world, castigation 
of the body, a crushing down of natural affections, and on 
the other side intense, whole - hearted devotion, stoical 
endurance, unflinching fidelity to creed and Church. Only 
a select minority seriously pursued this difficult aim. . 

147 



148 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



The fourth century is the great age of the rise and 
development of monasticism in the East ; a century later 
we see it rapidly spreading through the West. This 
Western movement was mainly stimulated by Jerome, who 
had spent years in his cell at Bethlehem, and organised by 
Cassian, who brought to Marseilles ideas he had gathered 
from Basil's arrangements in Asia Minor. Thus both of 
these men who were the chief influences leading to the 
formation of early Western monasticism — the one for its 
inspiration, the other for its regulation — derived their 
impulses and directions from the East. It is to the his- 
tory of the Eastern Church, therefore, that the origin and 
development of monasticism belong. 

The roots of monasticism lie far back in the past. Its 
development may be traced through the following stages : 
— (1) General Asceticism; (2) Specific Asceticism; (3) 
Anchoritism ; (4) Coenobitism ; (5) Eegulated Monasticism. 

1. A spirit of asceticism is always found hovering 
round the idea of religion even where it has not pene- 
trated deeply into that idea. Prayer and fasting go often 
together. While our Lord never commanded the latter 
practice nor even commended it,^ and while He justified 
His disciples in neglecting the custom,^ He assumed that 
it would be practised in times of sorrow,^ and He also gave 
directions for unostentatiousness in the performance of it by 
His disciples, implying that, as J ews, they would be carrying 
on their Jewish habits in this matter.^ In point of fact it 
was practised in apostolic times, though especially if not 
exclusively on critical occasions of exceptionally earnest 
prayer.^ The Palestinian Christians of the sub -apostolic 
age were warned not to fast on the Jews' fasting-days — an 
admonition implying that fasting on set days was part of 
their regular practice.^ In later times it was always pursued 

*The word "fasting," vijarela, in Mark ix. 29, of A.V. and T.R., is 
not critically authorised ; nor does it appear in the parallels of Matthew 
and Luke. 

2 Mark ii. 18, 19. » j^i^l., ver. 20. ^ Matt. vi. 16-18. 

• f.^. Acts xiii. 3. ^ DidacM, 8. 



EASTERN MONASTIOISM 



149 



more or less as part of the regular Christian life among 
those who aimed at thoroughness. 

2. During the second century asceticism received a 
powerful impulse from sectional bodies of Christians in pro- 
test against the increasing secularisation of the Church after 
the high enthusiasm of primitive times had cooled down. 
This was especially cultivated by the Grnostics, who claimed 
that in practical ethics as well as in intellectual concep- 
tions they constituted a sort of spiritual aristocracy among 
their fellow Christians. Marcion, while attempting to 
follow St. Paul in his gospel of grace, appeared as a moral 
reformer in a quite un-Pauline asceticism, although his 
" forbidding marriage " hke his other extravagances was 
really an exaggerated and distorted Paulinism.^ The 
Montanists also pressed the rigour of their Puritanism in 
the same direction. On the Jewish side the Encratites 
were pronounced ascetics. Meanwhile, as usual, the main 
body of the Church took a middle course ; it regarded 
asceticism with great respect, while not requiring it. 
Virginity is repeatedly honoured in the Shepherd of 
Hermas? and Justin Martyr refers to celibate old men and 
women in terms of admiration.^ By the third century 
this idea is much advanced, and we find Cyprian ranking 
celibacy as definitely higher than marriage.^ By the 
fourth century we see this view of giving exceptional 
honour to virginity (while not demanding it, as had been 
done by the Encratites, Marcion, Tatian, and other Gnostics) 
definitely registered as the rule of the Church. In the 
Apostolical Constitution vows of virginity are recognised 
though not demanded.^ Here then we are at the second 
stage in the development of asceticism. Certain people 
elect to live a celibate life and take vows accordingly. 
But these people do not come out from among their 
fellows ; they mingle with general society ; they remain as 
members of the family in their own homes. 

3. The next stage is the most fertile and significant. 

^ e.g. 1 Cor. vii. 1, 7, 8. ^ e.g. sim. 9, 10. * 1 Apol. 15. 

^ e.g. de Hahitu Virg. 23. ^ Const. Apost. iv. 14. 



150 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



The end of the third century and the beginning of the 
fourth saw the rise of the anchorites. These men forsook 
the cities and fled into the desert, living in solitary huts or 
caves or even out in the open air exposed to all weathers, 
roughly and thinly clad, feeding meagrely on a vegetarian 
diet, castigating themselves with vigorous self-discipline, 
vying with one another in an eager rivalry of self-mortifica- 
tion, spending their time in prayer, meditation, wrestling 
with evil impulses, performing a minimum of work, if any, 
just sufficient for a bare livelihood, by cultivating a little 
plot of ground, basket-making, or other manual labour, but 
when otherwise provided for doing nothing of the kind, 
often developing amazing extravagances of self-torture, 
sometimes going mad in their wild, cruel life, sometimes 
flinging it up and rushing into the vortex of city dissipation 
with the fury of a fierce reaction. 

The rapid rise and spread of this movement, which 
proved to be so immensely influential on all subsequent 
ages, demands an explanation ; and seeing that it took 
place at a particular historical moment, we must look for 
that explanation in part at least among the circumstances 
of the times. The main root of monasticism, as of all 
asceticism, is to be found in the dichotomy of human nature, 
the discord between the animal part and the soul in the 
constitution of man, the war between the flesh and the 
spirit — a conflict realised in Indian religions as keenly as 
in Christianity. But if that is always present the question 
faces us. Why did it take this peculiar form of monasticism 
especially at ' the beginning of the fourth century a.d. ? 
This was just the time when the tempest of persecution 
which had swept over the Christians from time to time 
passed away, and the sunshine of imperial favour bringing 
with it a luxurious summer of fashion broke out over the 
Church. Formerly the better life had been braced by the 
buffeting of adverse winds ; now it was in danger of being 
relaxed by the soft zephyr of worldly prosperity. The 
adoption of Christianity as the court religion turned on to 
it the stream of fashion. The world crowded into the 



EASTERN MONASTICISM 



151 



Church ; the consequence was that the Church became 
rapidly assimilated to the world. In the hard times the 
confessor was regarded as the athlete. His endurance 
then toughened his spiritual muscles. Now the occasion 
for that fine athleticism had passed. How was the pure 
flame of devotion to be kept clear and bright in the 
stifling atmosphere of a world nominally Christian, but 
really almost as unspiritual as the pagan society it was suc- 
ceeding ? That was the question of the hour. Earnest men 
answered it in a way that we may think selfish, if not 
cowardly. Instead of remaining in the world as its leaven, 
they fled from the world to escape its contamination. But 
the mischief of their mistake has been exaggerated where it 
was least hurtful. These men were not lost to society as 
moral influences. It became customary for town bishops 
and others to take their holidays in a retreat with an 
anchorite for a spiritual tonic, as modern town workers 
recruit their strength by mountaineering or some other 
recreation in touch with nature. The fame of great 
anchorites spread through the Church and held up the 
ideal of the simple life to the people of a decadent civilisa- 
tion. Some were preachers whom the multitude sought 
after like John the Baptist in the wilderness. Again and 
again a monk trained by the discipline of solitude was called 
to fill some high post in the Church, and then, responding 
to the unwelcome summons, proved himself singularly 
effective by reason of his detachment from secular concerns. 

There is another side ; but that is scarcely where the 
superficial observer might look for it. It is doubtful if the 
men who fled from the world could have influenced it 
much more by adopting the ordinary life of citizens than 
they did by awakening the popular imagination and firing 
the popular enthusiasm from their lonely retreats. 

The real mischief of monasticism was more remote and 
subtle, but not less hurtful in the end. The empire suffered 
by the withdrawal of so many of the strongest men from 
public service. Besides, for the best people not to marry, 
and for the continuation of the population to be left to 



152 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

men and women of a second grade morally, must have 
made for the deterioration of the race. Yet to hold up 
the ascetic ideal as the loftiest to aim at tended in that 
direction. It is evident that the diminution of the effective 
population caused by the enormous exodus of celibates into 
the wilderness, just at the time .when swarms of rapidly 
growing Teutonic peoples were gathering on the confines of 
the empire and even bursting through and pouring over 
it, was one of the direct causes of the break-up of the 
empire. The later emperors saw this and some of them 
regarded the monks as the deadliest enemies of the State. 
Moreover, even considered ecclesiastically, monasticism — 
especially in its earher stages — acted as a disintegrating 
influence. In his desert retreat the monk was well out of 
reach of the bishop. He recited his psalms , and conducted 
his devotions in his own way, and so shook himself free 
of the stiffening rubric that was followed in the usual 
assemblies for public worship. He was a Free Churchman 
at a time when authority was strenuously maintained in 
the Church as a whole. In the honour that was spon- 
taneously given him by an admiring public he became a 
dangerous rival to the bishop. Usually he was a fierce 
champion of orthodoxy ; but his orthodoxy tended to become 
narrow, hard, cruel. Nevertheless, in spite of all this, it 
may be that monasticism saved the situation at the critical 
moment when the Church was in danger of being confused 
with the world, a river suddenly let loose from its confining 
banks to spread in swamps and marshes over society and 
finally lose itself in the sands of secularity. 

The specific form of monasticism which emerged in 
separation from the world, and in a measure even from 
the Church as a society, first appeared in Egypt. It is 
doubtful whether floating traditions of Indian customs had 
anything directly to do with its rise, although there are 
remarkable coincidences of habit. The Therapeutse — if 
Mr. Conybeare's vindication of Philo's description of them ^ 
is accepted as satisfactory — were singularly similar fore- 
» De Vita Gont. 5. 



EASTERN MONASTICISM 153 

runners of the Christian monks. But it is more likely 
that similar causes led to similar effects than that in either 
case there was direct imitation. Alexandria was a centre 
of highly artificial civilisation ; the desert was close at 
hand for those who desired to escape from the corrupting 
influences of city life. The country that had Therapeutse 
before the Church appeared, and later dervishes under the 
Mohammedan regime, might naturally invite to similar 
practices in Christian times. We need not always assign 
the most strenuous motives to this movement. Doubtless 
there have always been men and women drawn to solitude 
by its own fascination, like Thoreau in his Walden ; there 
have always been lovers of nature who preferred the 
country to the town. 

Fresh light has been recently thrown on the lives and 
manners of the early Christian ascetics, especially in 
Egypt, by the publication of The Lausiac History of Pal- 
ladiuSy a series of biographical sketches of monks, many 
of whom the writer had known personally, with some of 
whom he had shared their cells for a time, while he obtained 
information about others from reports of their disciples. 
Palladius was born in Galatia in the year 367 ; he visited 
the Egyptian ascetics in 388, spending three years among 
them. All this was in his youth. Subsequently he visited 
ascetics in other parts, and he wrote his book in the 
year 42 0.^ 

The earliest fugitives to the Egyptian desert simply 
retired before persecution without any ascetic design.^ 
The first of the actual hermits is said to have been 
Paul, who lived in a cave near the Eed Sea and was 

* It was dedicated to Lausus, a chamberlain at the court of Theodosius ii. 
Hence the name by which it is now known. Its amazing stories have led to 
its being regarded by some — especially Weingarten and Lucius — as a pure 
fabrication. But Dom Cuthbert Butler has vindicated its genuineness. The 
whole question of monkish marvels must be determined with regard to many 
considerations of hyjmotism, telepathy, the sub-conscious ego, inaccuracy of 
observation, curious ideas as to the obligation of truth. We cannot doubt 
the genuineness of the life of St. Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus ; yet 
that book offers us miracles galore. 

^ Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 42. 



154 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



visited a short time before his death by St. Anthony.^ 
Jerome calls him " the founder of the monastic life " ; ^ 
but he is rather a shadowy personality, although we really 
have no reason to deny his existence. Much more im- 
portant is the great Anthony himself. Keen controversy 
has raged as to the genuineness of the famous life of 
Anthony ascribed to Athanasius. It has been urged that 
the extravagances, the puerilities, the absurd miracles of 
this story are utterly unworthy of the champion of the 
Nicene faith, and could not have issued from the pen that 
wrote the well-known treatises contained in his acknow- 
ledged works. But now we have equally extravagant 
and seemingly impossible things said of other anchorites by 
Palladius, and he vouches for some of his most marvellous 
stories as a personal friend who in some cases had shared 
for months the cells of the men concerning whom he 
narrates them.^ Athanasius calls Anthony "the founder 
of asceticism." There were anchorites when he took up a 
similar life, but living in huts * which they had built them- 
selves near the towns. Born in the year 250, he received 
his call at the age of eighteen in the words of Christ to 
the young ruler which he once heard in church. He spent 
fifteen years in a hut near his native village ; after which 
he shut himself up in one of those rock tombs that are so 
abundant in Egypt.^ After this he lived in close seclusion 
in a ruined castle, and blocked up the entrance with a 
huge stone. His final place of abode was at a still more 
remote spot by the Dead Sea, where he died at the age of 
105, ministered to in his extreme old age by his faithful 

1 Jerome, Vita Pauli ; Sozomen, Hist Eccl. i. 13. 

2 Auctor vitce monasticce ; princeps vitce monasticm. 

^ The genuineness of Athanasius' Vita Antonii is defended by Preuschen, 
Stiilcken, Bardenhewer, Roll, Volter, Leipoldt, Griitzmacher, Dom Butler, 
Text and Studies, vol. vi. No. 2 ; Texte v. Unterschungen, N.F. iv. 
4, 79. 

^ Called (xovaffT-qpla. 

^ The present writer was invited by a friend who was conducting ex- 
ploration work in Egypt to ' * spend a night with him in his tomb ; there 
would be ]jlenty of sand." Such a retreat is not altogether devoid of 
comfort, being warm at night and cool during the day. 



EASTERN MONASTICISM 



155 



disciples Amathas and Macarius. During this long life 
of asceticism Anthony had won a fame which made his 
example a model for multitudes who now entered on the 
life of anchorites. At times of critical importance he 
would leave his retreat and appear in the city of Alex- 
andria to preach to the people with immense effect, being 
received as a most venerated counsellor. He practised the 
exorcism of his times, fully believing in it. In the Arian 
controversy he was a staunch supporter of the Nicene 
position, and he did Athanasius good service by bringing 
the weight of his saintly reputation to bear on that side 
of the question. Altogether he is described as a man 
gifted with brain power and able to persuade men with 
forcible arguments. When dying he bequeathed his sheep- 
skin to Athanasius, who received it as the most precious 
legacy. 

Women as well as men were caught by the fascination 
of the ascetic life. In some cases they had personal 
reasons for adopting it. Thus Palladius tells the story 
of the maiden Alexandria, who shut herself up for ten 
years in such complete seclusion that even her attendant 
could not see her face. She told this attendant that she 
was never idle, for she spent her time in prayer, reciting 
the psalms, and weaving linen. Asked why she chose to 
live in this way, she said that it was in order to escape 
from the importunities of a lover. Among the most 
curious anchorites were the Stylites, men who lived on the 
summits of pillars. The practice originated in the fifth 
century with Simeon, who was born at Sisan, a village on 
the borders of Syria and Cilicia. He went through a suc- 
cession of self-imposed austerities, living for a summer 
buried up to his neck in a garden ; then in a dark cave 
with a spiked girdle round his waist ; later on in a cell near 
Antioch where a number of admirers gathered about him. 
In the year 423 he built a low pillar, lived on that for a 
time, then on a higher pillar, and so on till he was raised 
40 cubits above the earth, either in a hut, or, as seems 
more probable, merely on a railed platform. There he 



156 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

spent thirty years — the wonder of the world. Crowds of 
Arabians and Armenians, and even pilgrims from as far as 
Spain and Britain, flocked thither to see the holy man and 
obtain his blessing. Simeon preached to them from his 
lofty pulpit, and thus became one of the most potent 
religious influences of his age. Others followed his 
example, especially in Syria and Greece. The eccentricity 
was not adopted in Egypt and it was disapproved of in 
the Western Church. 

4. Meanwhile the fourth stage of the ascetic life was 
well advanced. This is known as the coenobite. It is the 
common life, the life of a community. The contrast with 
the hermit life is very marked. The ancient anchorite 
sought absolute solitude, chose his own course, lived as he 
thought fit a very self-contained life. The monk in a 
convent was to sink self in the common life, pursue no 
self-willed aims, obey the authority under which he was 
put. Of the three monastic vows that dominated monas- 
ticism throughout the Middle Ages — poverty, chastity, 
obedience — the first two only were observed by the primi- 
tive anchorites ; the third came in with the coenobite life. 
A movement in this direction was originated by the 
gathering of admiring disciples round the cell of some 
famous anchorite. When these men had their own cells 
they were set well apart out of earshot of one another. 
Still, here we see an approach to the idea of a group- 
ing of monks together. Sometimes a group of hermits 
would meet for the communion in an ordinary church 
if such a place happened to be within reach. But the 
definite founding of the coenobite system is ascribed to 
Pachomius, who established his first monastery at Tabenniti 
near Denderah, about the year 305. The idea spread 
rapidly, and by the time of the death of Pachomius in or 
near the year 345 there were eight monasteries and 
several hundreds of monks. It was a fully organised 
system from the first, with a superior, a system of visita- 
tion, and general chapters. A monastery consisted of 
a number of houses each containing some thirty or forty 



EASTERN MONASTICISM 



157 



monks. The rules were rigorous on the principles of a 
military system. Still there was room for variations of 
habit. Describing the monastery at Panopolis (Akhmlm), 
Palladius tells us that the tables were laid and that a 
meal was prepared at midday and at every successive 
hour till late in the evening, to suit the convenience of 
monks who fasted up to various times in the day. Yet 
some, he says, ate only every second day, some only every 
third day, some only every fifth day. 

Palladius is full of strange stories of the Egyptian 
anchorites and monks, some of them too fantastic to be 
better than childish fables, yet most of them significant 
of some trait in the ascetic life. The fidelity with which 
he records the faults he discovered in his visits to the 
desert retreats must be set down to his credit for good 
faith. Macarius punished himself for killing a gnat in a 
moment of irritation by retiring to the Scetic marshes, 
and there spending six months in a state of nudity among 
the insects, till on his return he was only recognised by 
his voice, his skin being like an elephant's hide. To Valens 
of Palestine the devil once came in the appearance of 
Christ, with such flattery of speech that the poor man's 
head was turned, and he told his brethren the next day that 
he had no need to partake of the communion. " For," said 
he, " I have seen Christ Himself." He was put in irons 
for a twelvemonth, and thus effectually humbled and cured 
of his delusion — if such it was ; but Sir Walter Scott's 
famous story of Colonel Gardiner reminds us that the 
incident is capable of a very different interpretation. 
Another story of a similar character does not look quite 
so innocent. One night, as Palladius tells us, the devil 
came to Eucarpus, who had spent fifteen years in the 
ascetic life, speaking to nobody, and said, " I am Christ." 
The monk believed, and fell down and worshipped his 
vision. The intoxication of this scene encouraged the 
poor man to insubordination, so that he called Macarius 
* a painted image " and Evagrius " a mere hewer of words." 
He too was put in irons for a year, after which he only 



158 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



lived thirteen months, ministering to the sick and washing 
the feet of strangers. Stephen lost all desire for meat 
and treated with contempt those who when out of health 
took milk or cooked flesh. His pride had a terrible fall. 
Eesenting the authority of Macarius, he ran off to Alex- 
andria, and there plunged into gluttony, drunkenness, and 
debauchery. 

5. The last stage in the development of Eastern monas- 
ticism is due to the statesmanlike wisdom and energy of 
the great Basil, who may be regarded as the Benedict of 
the Oriental Church. The arrangements made by Pach- 
omius applied only to his own monks. By far the larger 
number of the ascetics were living according to their 
private lights, and even where there were monasteries 
these were very variously administered. Basil travelled 
widely, visiting many of these institutions and discovering 
their objectionable features. Two practices in particular 
he held to be very mischievous. The first was the hermit 
habit. Solitude he thought dangerous to humility and 
charity. " Whose feet wilt thou wash ? " he asks ; " whom 
wilt thou serve ? how canst thou be last of all — if thou 
art alone ? " The second of these evils was idleness. 
Basil's rule insists on industry. At the same time he puts 
restraint on the wild extravagances of asceticism. A man 
of ascetic habits himself — with his one daily meal of beans 
— ^he writes, " If fasting hinders you from labour, it is 
better to eat like the workman of Christ that you 
are." The monk can possess no private property, meet no 
woman, drink no wine, read only canonical books. The 
true ascetic uses the dry and least nourishing food and 
eats but once a day.^ There is to be reading during the 
meals.^ Basil's pride and masterfulness should not be 
allowed to blind us to his careful, considerate kindness. 
He studied the welfare of the monks, relaxed their more 
severe exercises, but braced them for regular, wholesome 
work. Lofty-minded himself, he seeks to kindle a fine 
flame of enthusiasm in others. Thus he exclaims, 

* Const. Monast. cap. vi. * Reg. href, tract. Interr. 186. 



EASTERN MONASTICISM 



159 



" Athletes, workmen of Jesus Christ, you have engaged 
yourselves to fight for Him all the day, to bear all its 
heat. Seek not repose before the end ; wait for the 
evening, that is to say, the end of life, the hour at which 
the householder shall come to reckon with you and pay 
your wages." 



DIVISION II 

THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIOD 



CHAPTER I 
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 

(a) Sale's Koran. Original authorities ; traditions collected by 
Zohri, Musa ibn Ochba and Abn Mashar ; followed by Ibn 
Ishse, Ibn Hisbam, Wakidy, Tabari, Ibn Atbir, whose works 
are extant more or less in their original state ; Michael the 
Syrian (edit, and French trans, by Chabot, 1899-1907). 

(6) Muir, Life of Mahomet, 3rd ed. 1894; The Caliphate, Its Rise, 
Decline, and Fall, 3rd ed. 1898 ; R. Bos worth Smith, 
Lectures on Mohammedanism, 2nd ed. 1876 ; Butler, Arab 
Conquest of Egypt, 1902; Sprenger, Das Leben und die 
Lehre Mohammad, 1869 ; Weil, Einleitung in den Koran, 
2nd ed. 1878. 

OuE familiar Western divison of Church History into three 
periods — the Patristic, the Mediaeval, and the Modern — 
does not rightly apply to the Eastern half of Christendom. 
There were no Middle Ages in the Oriental Churches, 
for the simple reason that there was no Eenaissance or 
Eeformation to inaugurate a third period from which those 
ages could be sharply divided — no terminus ad quern. 
Nevertheless, other events roughly mark off a corresponding 
block of time. In the West the chief cause of the immense 
change that broke the classic traditions of the past and 
introduced medisevalism was the Teutonic flood of colonisa- 
tion, before which half the Eoman Empire crumbled away, 
and which ultimately issued in the shaping of the nations 

160 



THE RISE AND SPREAD OP MOHAMMEDANISM 161 



of Europe. About the same time the tempest of Moham- 
medanism arose in Arabia to sweep over some of the 
fairest provinces of the Eastern branch of the empire, 
tearing them off limb by hmb, and leaving only a truncated 
torso to represent the dominion of the Caesars. 

This happened in the seventh century, just after the 
last of the Latin Fathers, Gregory, had laid the foundations 
of mediaeval theology. But the two invasions — the 
Teutonic in the West and the Arabian in the East — were 
very different in character. They agreed in one lamentable 
feature. In both cases a more barbarous race came to 
wreck and destroy an ancient civilisation. They also 
agreed in one redeeming characteristic. Each, appearing 
as the besom of destruction, was really an instrument of 
judgment on an age already perishing in its own corruption. 
While the Germans brought physical and moral health 
from their remote forests to the effete city-life of Italy, 
the Arabs came with the simplicity of the desert to 
castigate the effeminacy of Oriental luxury — until in a 
very short time they themselves fell victims to the same 
fatal narcotic. But there was this radical difference 
between the two immigrations. The Goths were Christians, 
and as they settled down among the conquered peoples, 
intermingling with them, if the unfortunate accident of 
their Arianism had not stood in the way they would have 
fraternised from the first with the churches of their adopted 
land. But the Arabs appeared as missionaries of a new 
religion, who held themselves aloof from the peoples they 
subdued in proud scorn — except in the one significant 
fact, that they wedded the wives and daughters of their 
victims. Liberal and lenient at first towards all who 
submitted to their yoke, they soon made it apparent 
that Jews and especially Christians were only allowed to 
practise the rites of their faiths under sufferance, and that 
with increasingly galling restrictions. From the seventh 
century onwards right down to our own day the chief 
factor of Church politics in the East has been its relation 
to Mohammedanism. 

XI 



I 



162 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Mohammed was born at the city of Mecca in the 
year 570 ; but he was brought up in the tents of the 
Bedouins, from whom he learnt simple manners and among 
whom he maintained a primitive purity of life. He was 
forty years of age before he was conscious of the first 
impulse to his mission. Then the great thought of One 
God, Creator and Euler of All, dawned upon his mind as 
a revelation. Mohammedanism has been traced to Jewish 
and Christian sources combined with Arabian traditions. 
There can be no doubt that both the rival Monotheistic 
faiths indirectly affected the prophet. We meet with 
references to them in the Koran; and Bible characters 
and Hebrew legends have had a considerable part in its 
composition. But while we may recognise these materials 
as fuel for the sacrifice, we cannot discover in them the 
fire. It was the personality of Mohammed, his vision of 
truth gained through deep brooding and strugghng of soul, 
that constituted him the founder of Islam. There can 
be no question of his sincerity at the beginning of his 
career, nor of the purity of his original motives; it is 
equally clear that he deteriorated in his later days, became 
at least a self -deceiver, fell into self-indulgent vices, and 
justified them with supposed visions and voices from 
heaven. The burden of his message was a ster:^ protest 
against the prevalent idolatry of Arabia, and his enunciation 
of the unity, the spirituality, the supremacy of God as 
at once almighty and most merciful. The Mussulman 
cry — " Allah Akbar ! — God is Great ! " — is the root 
principle of Mohammedanism. The sublime truth burst 
on the desert like a revelation. Undoubtedly it intro- 
duced a purer faith than the gross heathenism that it 
supplanted. 

This clear, vigorous new teaching braced the minds of 
its adherents with belief in an inflexible fixture of events 
which was not mere fatalism, as is commonly asserted, 
but the idea of a personal purpose in the dominant will 
of the merciful Allah. Further, with this creed was 
conjoined the doctrine of the equality of all male believers, 



THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 163 

involving the duty of brotherly-kindness. Then the pro- 
hibition of wine was one sign that Mohammed aimed at 
moral vigour and simplicity of life. On the other hand, 
the most fatal defect of Mohammedanism is its permission 
of polygamy and concubinage, which together with the 
veil involves the degradation of woman and her separation 
from the duties and interests of the world. This, as Sir 
William Muir points out, is more hurtful to men than to 
women. Lastly, under the rule of Islam, slavery also is 
sanctioned and largely practised. 

The tolerance of the early caliphs has been frequently 
applauded. But in its essential nature the Mussulman 
faith is dogmatic and intolerant. The Koran, which its 
founder claimed to have received by dictation from heaven, 
is to be taken as infallible. Thus thought is paralysed 
and all religions but that of Islam are treated with contempt. 
As a consequence, cruelty to the unbeliever and especially 
the apostate — that is to say, the convert to Christianity — 
has been frequently permitted, and that with ruthless 
fanaticism. 

Mohammed must have had real faith in his message 
to bear him through the early period of discouragement 
when his converts were but few. At that time they 
could only be won by persuasion in face of popular dis- 
favour, and at length it was necessary for the prophet to 
escape from Mecca, a hunted fugitive. The Hegira — 
the flight to Medina — took place in the year 622, which 
afterwards became the starting - point of the Moham- 
medan era. 

In the second stage of his enterprise Mohammed 
sanctioned the sword for the rooting out of idolatry and 
the spread of the faith. By thus following up preaching 
with force, he had secured most of Arabia at the time 
of his death (a.d. 632). But there is no proof that he had 
ever contemplated crossing the borders of his own land. 
With Mohammed Islam was the religion of the Arab. 

While the death of the prophet produced con yter nation 
among his followers, it was the occasion of insurrection on 



164 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

the part of the conquered tribes of the desert. The crisis 
was acute ; but among the " companions " were men equal 
to its demands. When Omar was passionately haranguing 
the people who crowded the mosque at Medina, the calm 
Abu Bekr put him aside with the memorable words : 
" Whoso worshippeth Mohammed let him know that 
Mohammed is dead; but whoso worshippeth God, let 
him know that God liveth and dieth not." Abu Bekr, 
then sixty years of age, was elected first caliph — i.e. successor 
to the prophet. He had a heavy task before him in the 
subjugation of the apostate tribes, but the work was 
triumphantly accomplished by his great general Khalid. 
In the conduct of this war and the behaviour of its leader 
we may discover the secret of the success of Islam and its 
marvellous career during the next few years. Everywhere 
the terms were submission or the sword. While idolatry 
was to be rooted out completely, for Jews and Christians 
submission might take the form of tribute. But all Arabs 
who accepted Islam were at once enrolled in the army and 
endowed with its privileges. Under the early caliphs 
there was very little for the civil administrators to do 
beyond collecting and distributing tribute and booty. 
These caliphs were anxious to prevent their people building 
houses or engaging in agriculture lest the settled life 
should chill their martial ardour. Thus all Islam was 
an armed camp, and the chief service of religion was to 
fight for it. In the conduct of war all who resisted were 
slaughtered, and their property, their wives, and their 
daughters confiscated. One-fifth of the booty was reserved 
for the treasury, but immediately distributed among the 
faithful after the small expenses of administration were 
paid; the remaining four-fifths were divided in equal 
proportions among the men who had engaged in the fight. 
The same was done with the women captives. It was 
accounted a scandal that Khalid once married the wife 
of an opposing leader on the battlefield, and the caliph 
rebuked him for his indecent haste. Nevertheless he 
retained his post and acted very similarly another time. 



THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 165 

If an Arab fell while fighting for Islam, he was to expect 
two bright-eyed damsels to descend from heaven, wipe the 
dust and sweat from his face, and carry him away to a 
voluptuous paradise. Thus the reward of fighting was in 
any case a harem — if the warrior survived, a harem on 
earth ; if he died, a harem in paradise. This was the 
precise opposite of the Christian ideal preached by the 
priests and professed by the monks. Celibacy with 
chastisement of the flesh was the stern Church conception 
of the saint ; gross sensuality in multiple marriage was held 
out as the bait for the Mohammedan warrior. A more sharp 
antithesis between two ideals of life was never conceived. 

Nevertheless this is only one side of the shield. We 
should do deep injustice to Islam and at the same time 
flatter Christendom hypocritically if we refused to sternly 
face the other side. The Mohammedan sincerely believed 
that he was an instrument in the hand of Allah ; he was 
sure that it was Allah's will for the infidel to be smitten 
down on refusing submission, and for the faith of the 
prophet to be maintained and spread at the point of the 
sword. Thus he was fired with the zeal of the missionary. 
Under these circumstances we can only admire the com- 
parative tolerance of the early caliphs and their readiness 
to protect Jews and Christians on the simple condition of 
the payment of tribute. Now look at the state of the 
Christian world at this crisis. The Church was torn with 
internal factions. The strength of its best minds was given 
to the discussion of the most difficult points of dogma. 
On account of heresy in regard to these remote abstractions 
whole provinces were driven by persecution to disaffection. 
At the same time the morals of the empire were abominably 
corrupt. The saintly ideal of the monks — not always 
realised by its own professors — left the mass of the people, 
who frankly confessed that they could not attain to it, all 
the more ready to abandon any strenuous endeavours after 
virtue. City life was sinking into the slough of luxurious 
self-indulgence ; and the government was feeble and only 
spasmodically energetic by fits and starts. 



166 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Although after the death of the prophet Islam had first 
to fight for its very existence, and although it was only 
by desperate courage and energy that the revolting tribes 
were reduced to sullen submission, Mohammedanism had 
this singular power that it could cast a spell over its 
reluctant converts and convert them into fervent disciples. 
Moreover, when it spread beyond the borders of Arabia 
a new inducement was added to encourage loyalty. The 
Arabs became an aristocratic order with distinctive privi- 
leges, and although the equal brotherhood of all believers 
was preached in the Koran it was never practised as be- 
tween the army from Arabia and the Syrians, Persians, 
Copts, in other countries. Apparently Mohammed had not 
contemplated its extension to alien races. Therefore the 
brotherhood of Islam was really the union of the Bedouin of 
the desert in equality of privilege and community of mutual 
service. The rule that required all the children of the 
faithful, whether from wives or concubines, to be brought 
up as Mohammedans with the full status of their fathers, 
led to the rapid growth of the army of Islam and its con- 
tinual infusion with the renewing vigour of fresh blood. 
So this conquering host poured out spreading death and 
terror, always gathering spoil, and often exacting tribute. 

When it looked beyond the borders of Arabia Moham- 
medanism found itself confronted by two great empires — 
Persia in the East and Eome in the North and West. 
United these two powers could easily have nipped the new 
terror in the bud. Even separately under normal circum- 
stances either of them should have been more than a match 
for it. But at this most momentous juncture their century 
long enmity, which had sometimes slumbered for genera- 
tions, had broken out into deadly feud. 

A few years before the appearance of the new and 
totally unexpected danger, Chosroes the king of Persia had 
effected a successful invasion of the Eoman Empire, first 
penetrating to Palestine and seizing Jerusalem. That city 
of imparaUeled misfortunes was then given up to outrage 
and plundering, during which time thousands of monks, 



THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 167 



nuns, and priests were slaughtered. Fire followed pillage. 
The church of the Holy Sepulchre and other churches were 
partially or wholly wrecked. From Palestine the victor 
advanced to Egypt, and seized Alexandria amid similar 
scenes of slaughter and outrage (a.d. 618). 

At length Sergius the patriarch of Constantinople 
roused the Emperor Heraclius to a tremendous effort for the 
recovery of his lost territory and Jerusalem in particular. 
The tide now turned. Victory after victory attended the 
Byzantine arms. A great point was made of the fact that 
the Cross in its reliquary was recovered and restored to the 
altar at the Holy Sepulchre. Thus this was in a way a 
war for religion, a crusade of the Eastern Empire. But no 
sooner was the great feat of his life achieved than Heraclius 
began to live at ease, till he sank into enervating self-indul- 
gence among the lavish luxuries of life at Constantinople. 

The Eoman emperor's success in the Persian war led 
him to underrate the new danger already looming on the 
southern horizon. Besides, when the conflict with Islam 
began in deadly earnest the imperial troops were divided 
among themselves, half-hearted, and so reluctant to fight — 
if we may credit the Arab chronicler — that in some cases 
they were dragged forward chained together. Such an 
army had little chance against the hardy desert veterans, 
dashing into battle aflame with fanaticism. Modern science 
has armed the civilised nations with weapons that are 
practically irresistible by barbarous races. But before the 
invention of gunpowder, civilisation and barbarism were 
more on a level in military resources. 

Chaldsea and Southern Syria were in close touch with 
Arabia, and naturally these were the first districts to be 
overrun by the advancing tide. At Hira the Arabs came 
upon a monastery outside the city walls, and the defence- 
less monks, exposed to the full fury of their attack, and seeing 
no alternative to submission, acted as intermediaries and 
arranged terms of surrender between the invaders and the 
besieged inhabitants (a.d. 633). The Christians in this 
city retained their faith and were found to be true to it 



168 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

several centuries later, in spite of their subjection to a 
Mohammedan government. 

It was in Syria that the Arabs came into contact with 
the Eoman Empire. At first the forces of the invaders 
were paralysed by the confusion and jealousies of separate 
commands. Then Abu Bekr fetched the great General 
Khalid from Mesopotamia to put fresh vigour into the 
attack. Under his leadership a terrible battle was fought 
close to the Yermuk, one of the eastern tributaries of the 
Jordan, which resulted in a rout of the Eomans (1st of 
September, A.D. 634). The Arab chronicler states that the 
beaten imperial troops were " toppled over the bank even 
as a wall is toppled over," and adds that over 100,000 
men were lost in the chasm. The Byzantine chroniclers are 
discreetly silent with reference to these disasters of the 
empire. But after making every allowance for the Oriental 
habit of exaggeration, we can see that the defeat must have 
been complete. This astonishing event struck terror into 
the court at Constantinople. For a time it paralysed the 
opposition of the empire to the daring invasion of one of 
the fairest of its provinces. What was thus lost was never 
again permanently recovered. 

The same year Abu Bekr died. He had lived in 
extreme simplicity — a marked contrast to the luxury and 
splendour of the courts of the emperor and the great king. 
When the treasury at Medina was opened only a single 
gold piece fell out of the bags. Although much wealth 
was now pouring in from tribute, " all shared alike, recent 
convert and veteran, male and female, bond and free." 
Abu Bekr was succeeded by his friend and counsellor, the 
passionate, energetic Omar, now mellowed with age, who 
as the second caliph proved at least an equally capable 
ruler. Thus to its other advantages over the corrupt and 
decrepit empire Islam added consummate ability in its 
early leaders. 

The next year (a.d. 635) Damascus was stormed, but the 
city capitulated just in time to save the lives of its inhabit- 
ants. Half of the property of the place was seized, and, 



THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 169 

in addition to the taxes raised under the empire, a tribute 
of one piece of gold was imposed on every male adult who 
did not embrace Islam, and a measure of corn was taken 
from every field. This became the model for the treat- 
ment of Christians elsewhere. The churches were equally 
distributed between Christians and Mohammedans. The 
great cathedral of St. John the Baptist was at first divided 
in two, one half serving for each religion ; and so it remained 
for eighty years, after which time the Christians were ejected 
and it became wholly a mosque. But down to our day — 
even in spite of a recent fire — the visitor can read over 
its chief entrance the Psalmist's magnificent words — 

"Thy Kingdom, Christ, is an everlasting Kingdom; 
And Thy Dominion is from Generation to Generation."^ 

The next step was to carry the war with Persia to a 
conclusion. This was now prosecuted with the utmost 
vigour till the capital Medain fell into the hands of the 
invaders. On account of the unhealthiness of its site for 
men accustomed to the pure air of the desert, they removed 
the centre of government to two new places which rapidly 
grew into the important cities of Kufa and Bussorah. 

Meanwhile the movement in Syria was advancing. 
Heraclius retired to Eoha (Edessa), and the Arabs under 
Khalid defeated the Byzantine forces at Chalcis, and then 
advanced on Aleppo, which they seized. A battle was 
fought in the woods near Antioch, and this too went 
against the Greeks, who were driven back to the city, 
which was then invested. It soon capitulated. Thus the 
great, rich capital of Syria, the centre of Christianity in the 
province, fell into the hands of the Mohammedans. The 
Bedouin Christians of Syria, who had never been very 
fervent in their faith, for the most part went over to Islam ; 
but the inhabitants of the cities remained true. These 
people were treated with moderation ; their churches were 

1 H BACIAEIA- COT XE BACIAEIA' nANTfiN' TON AIONON' KAI' 
H- AECnOTEIA- COT* EN* HACH- TENEAI' KAI TENEAI. 



170 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



not taken from them, and public Christian worship was 
permitted. Heraclius now retreated to Constantinople, 
admitting sadly that the valuable province of Syria was 
lost to the empire. 

Palestine was next invaded by armies under Amr' and 
Shorahbil. At Jerusalem the patriarch Sophronius, as the 
representative of the people, sued for peace. Omar attached 
so much importance to the possession of the sacred city that 
he travelled to Jabia — the first journey of a caliph out of 
Arabia — and there met a deputation from the patriarch, 
with whom he arranged terms of capitulation (a.d. 636). 
Then he went up to Jerusalem and received Sophronius 
and the citizens in a kindly manner, imposing a light tribute 
and permitting the continued possession and use of all the 
churches and shrines by the Christians. This event is of great 
importance in view of subsequent history. When we come 
to the time of the Crusaders and observe the fanatical fury 
they exhibited while rescuing the holy sites from the hands 
of the infidel, it will be well to recollect that the city had 
been transferred to the Mohammedans without any resist- 
ance by the action of the Christian patriarch. Thus 
Sophronius carried out under new circumstances the same 
policy that Jeremiah had urged in vain upon his infatuated 
contemporaries when an earlier invasion from the East was 
coming up with a force that made resistance hopeless. 
Much happened between the peaceful surrender of the city 
in the seventh century to the courteous and reasonable 
Omar and the wrongs and sufferings that provoked the 
Crusades five hundred years later. The so-called Ordinance 
of Omar attributes to the great caliph a number of humiliat- 
ing exactions for which he was not responsible and which 
represent the accretions of succeeding years of despotism. 
When the caliphate was established at Damascus and 
Bagdad, the simple requirement of tribute was not deemed 
enough to stamp the inferiority of the Christians. They 
were to become marked men and women by wearing yellow 
stripes in their dress ; they were forbidden to ride on 
horseback ; if riding an ass or a mule it must be with 



THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 171 



wooden stirrups and saddle knobs ; their graves were to be 
level with the ground ; their children were prohibited the 
instruction of Moslem masters ; no high office was to be 
entrusted to them ; no new churchee were to be erected ; 
no cross was to remain outside a church ; no bells were to 
be rung ; no processions were to be permitted at Easter or 
any festal occasion ; the Mohammedans were to be allowed 
free access to the holy sites. Worse was done apart from 
any ordinances ; but these recognised rules were sufficient 
to set a badge of inferiority on the Christians and restrain 
the demonstration of their religion. Perhaps, however, 
when we consider the intolerance practised between the 
several parties in the Church one against another, often 
amounting to serious persecution and sometimes breaking 
out into bloodshed, we may still respect and honour the 
comparative liberality and patience of their Mohammedan 
masters. 

Arabia, however, presents an exception to this policy of 
comparative tolerance. This was 'par excellence the land of 
Islam. Mohammed had said, " In Arabia there shaU be no 
faith but the faith of Islam." Accordingly an ancient body 
of Christians in the province of Najran was driven into exile. 
Some settled in Syria, others near Kufa, both parties, it 
will be observed, still under the Mohammedan government. 

In the year 340 Amr' invaded Egypt. Approaching 
the country in a south-westerly direction, he first subdued 
Upper Egypt and thence descended on Alexandria. During 
the siege Heraclius died ; the Greek naval troops took to 
their ships and fled ; and the weakened garrison found it 
necessary to capitulate. This saved the city from destruc- 
tion ; its Christian inhabitants like the Copts elsewhere 
were treated leniently and merely put under tribute. 
Nevertheless, here was another limb torn from the Koman 
Empire in the East. First Syria, next Egypt, two of the 
most important provinces, had fallen into the hands of the 
Arabs. The two great patriarchates of Antioch and Alex- 
andria now came under the yoke of the Mohammedan 
government. 



172 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

The case of Egypt is peculiarly important for the 
glaring proofs it affords of the suicidal policy of the Church 
and State in preparing for the final collapse of the power of 
both in this province. Chosroes had done great mischief in 
his invasion ; but this came and went, while the oppression 
of the imperial government was almost more intolerable, 
because it was continuous. As Monophy sites the Copts 
were disowned by the Church and persecuted by the State. 
In comparison with the Byzantine intolerance the yoke of 
the Mohammedan government seemed easy. To these 
ill-treated Copts the invader came as a deliverer. It was 
the policy of the Arabs to favour the schismatics and 
heretics among the Christians in order to weaken the 
empire's power of resistance. These people have been 
accused of directly aiding the infidels. While it cannot be 
denied that in some cases they did so, the wholesale charges 
brought against them by their opponents go beyond verifi- 
able facts. All down the course of history we have to 
be on our guard against the libels perpetrated against 
heretics by the narrow-minded, passionate champions of 
orthodoxy. But for the purposes of an invader mere 
passivity and non-resistance would be almost as serviceable 
as direct assistance. There was no question of patriotism. 
From time immemorial the Egyptians had lived under 
tyrannical masters, and certainly they had little reason to 
cultivate a sentiment of loyalty to the Greek despot at 
Constantinople who lent his forces to aid the Church of the 
empire in punishing them for what they regarded as their 
higher loyalty — their loyalty to Christ and truth. 

Thus it came about that the Nestorians in Syria and 
the Jacobites in Egypt — both out of favour with the Greek 
government, because out of communion with the Greek 
Church — found rest and protection under the aegis of 
Islam. This fact needs to be grasped in all its wida- 
reaching significance if we would account for the success of 
the Mohammedan movement. But even at first the rest was 
often disturbed and the protection accompanied by irksome 
conditions, and it was not long before the mild sway of the 



THE RISE AND SPREAD OF MOHAMMEDANISM 173 

early caliphs was followed by the harsh and cruel tyranny 
of their degenerate successors. Meanwhile the mischief 
was done. The empire had lost its provinces ; the Church 
was divided and insuperable barriers were raised against 
reunion. 

Further, when we consider that, while theological 
rancour ruled among the clergy, relic and image worship 
was the most popular form of religion among the laity, 
we can understand how the Mohammedan gained ground 
by presenting to the world what on the face of it was a 
purer faith. The wonder is that most of the Christians 
remained true to their religion. No doubt there was much 
genuine piety among the people of which history — chiefly 
concerned with the quarrels of the clergy — does not con- 
descend to take account. That was the saving salt. We 
come across pleasing instances of friendships between 
liberal-minded caliphs and Christian scholars. Moham- 
medanism had its lessons to teach Christendom. Lastly, 
the iconoclastic controversy, which became the next 
disturbing movement in Eastern Christendom, can be 
traced in a measure to the influence of Islam. It was 
MohFimmed's war against idols carried over . into the 
Church. 



CHAPTEE II 

BYZANTINE ART 

(a) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. x. 4 ; Vit. Const, iii. 48, 50 ; Procopius, 
de j^dificiis Justiniani,i. 1-3 ; Evagrius, Hist. Eccl. iv. 31. 

(6) Fergusson, Handbook of Architecture, 1859 ; de Vogiie, Eglises 
de la Terre Sainte, 1860 ; Hiibsch, Alt. Christ. Kirchen, 
1862; Smith, Diet. Christ. Antiq., Articles: "Church," 
" Image," " Jesus Christ, Representations of " ; Mrs. Jameson 
and Lady Eastlake, Hist, of our Lord . . . in Works of Art, 
1864 ; Bayet, VArt Byzantine, 1883 ; Leclerq, Manuel 
d'ArcMologie Chretienne, 1907. 

The characteristics of Church life at this period are quite 
as clearly impressed upon its art as upon its literature. 
By studying the controversial writings of the time we 
may be able to gain some insight into the intellectual con- 
ditions of bishops and other leading theologians ; but when 
we look at the churches, with their paintings and mosaics, 
many of which are still extant, or come to imagine what 
they are and were by means of plans, photographs, and 
descriptions, we are really brought much nearer to the 
actual lives of the men and women who constituted the 
mass of Christendom in these days of the Greek Empire. 
The iconoclastic controversy which broke out early in the 
eighth century has forced the attention of historians to one 
phase of this subject, and its importance cannot be weighed 
or its significance appreciated till we have before our minds' 
eye a vivid conception of the scenes amid which it moved. 
But more than that, we need to have some idea of the 
large place occupied by art in the Eastern Church in order 
to understand the life and character of the people who 
composed it. Dean Stanley pointed out that what music 



BYZANTINE ART 



175 



is in the Western Church, pictures are in the Eastern. They 
express the colour, the emotion, even the passion of religion. 

In considering this subject we will look first at the 
architecture of the churches, and then consider the pictorial 
art with which their walls were clothed. 

Byzantine architecture is the only style of building 
that can be correctly denominated Christian architecture. 
We are accustomed to assign that title to the Gothic order ; 
but neither its area, its age, nor its origin justify us in 
doing so. Our English cathedrals and the great churches 
of France are sometimes described as embodiments of the 
Christian idea, with its far-reaching mystery and its soar- 
ing aspiration. Those forests of clustered pillars and long 
vaulted aisles, like avenues in stone, the fine pointed arches, 
the " storied windows richly dight," the towers and spires 
and pinnacles, the quiet side-chapels, the sheltered cloisters 
— all contrast strongly with the ordered symmetry and clear 
daylight beauty of the self-contained, perfect Greek temples. 
Accordingly we have come to take them as expressive of 
the essential difference between the spirit of Christianity and 
the spirit of classical paganism. To be more accurate, we 
should say that this Gothic, as rich in colour when it was 
first produced as it was elaborate in form, really repre- 
sents only the mediaeval mind and life of north-west 
Europe. It is Anglo-Saxon and Frankish. We meet 
with little of it in southern Europe. In Italy the Eoman 
and Eomanesque styles persisted till they blossomed into 
the Eenaiscent. We have Gothic architecture in northern 
Italy, in Tuscany, and to a small extent even in Eome, 
but only as an exotic, a temporary, alien visitor. Its most 
glorious product, Giotto's Campanile at Florence, that 
work of jewellery in architecture, with its straight lines 
and right angles, and its horizontal summit, has many 
traces of the persistence of the Eomanesque about it. 
Moreover, it must be admittted that on the whole 
St. Paolo outside the city of Eome represents more truly 
the earlier period of the Christian architecture of south 
Europe and St. Peter's the later. 



176 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Then, if we turn to the measurement of time, the 
limited range of the Gothic art will be equally apparent. 
It rose in the twelfth century and it declined in the 
sixteenth ; it did not flourish in full vigour for more than 
three or four hundred years. Even in the north it was 
preceded by the Komanesque, especially in the type 
commonly called Norman, and it was followed by 
Eenaiscent. In England the great Durham nave and 
many another cathedral and church structure of the 
twelfth century and earlier bear witness against the 
unique claim of the pointed arch to represent antiquity, 
and St. Paul's Cathedral is the plainest proof of its tran- 
sience. Christianity is nearly two thousand years old ; the 
reign of Gothic architecture lasted less than one-fifth of 
this time. 

The third point concerns the question of origin. 
Fanciful theories about the Gothic symboKsm must give 
place to sober conceptions of a very different kind when 
we trace the early English and the corresponding 
Continental styles to their origins. Then it is seen that 
the pointed arch did not arise from a contemplation of 
the effect produced by the crossing of round arches in 
mural decoration — as at Norwich and many other places. 
Structurally, it came from the desire to improve on the 
Eoman barrel-shaped vault — to strengthen it by raising 
its centre, so as to adapt it to the sloping roof by bringing 
the top of the vault nearer to the ridge of the roof, and 
at the same time to admit of the adjustment of transverse 
vaulting for transepts, chapels, and windows. The pointed 
window naturally followed the pointed vault above it. No 
doubt northern requirements helped the evolution of certain 
Gothic features. The steep roof would be useful for throw- 
ing off snow ; the large window would be good for light in a 
dull and cloudy climate. This would admit of tracery, and 
when stained glass was introduced it would be desirable for 
it to become larger still. Then in turn the great windows, 
by weakening the walls, would concentrate the weight and 
thrust on what remained so as to necessitate the support 



BYZANTINE ART 



177 



of buttresses, considered by some ^ to be the essential note 
of Gothic architecture, its one invariably characteristic 
feature. Thus we have the system of balance, thrust and 
counter-thrust, and ultimately the skilful adjustment of 
points of support and resistance to the total elimination 
of constructive walls, as at Sainte Chapelle in Paris, at 
Beauvais, and at Amiens. All this no doubt is a western 
and northern development taking place within Christendom. 
Still it is not exclusively religious architecture. We have 
some of the finest specimens of Gothic in the cloth halls 
and town halls of Ypres and Bruges, Louvain and Brussels. 
The pointed arch is an importation from the East, where it 
was used centuries before it appeared in the West. There, 
however, it was not Christian in origin or usage, but 
Saracenic. It is no mere coincidence, therefore, that it was 
adopted in Western Europe just after the Crusades, which 
had reopened communication with the East. At the same 
time this architecture was being directly developed by the 
Mohammedan invaders of Sicily and by the Moors in 
Spain. 

Now let us turn to Byzantine architecture. This has 
dominated Eastern Christendom from the sixth century 
to our own age. For fourteen hundred years it has been 
the one system followed by the Oriental half of Christendom. 
From the first it was conterminous with the Byzantine 
Empire, and therefore it has extended as far as Eavenna 
in Italy, the capital of the Exarchate, and given us one 
of its most magnificent products in St. Mark's at Venice. 
Further, this architecture is not only spread over a much 
larger area and found to be flourishing for a much longer 
period than the Gothic ; unlike that system, it can claim 
a purely Christian origin. It was developed on Christian 
soil and to serve Christian purposes. From the first it 
was essentially Church architecture. It is the one style of 
building that has been evolved for the express purpose 
of meeting the requirements of Christian worship as this 
is practised in the Greek Church. Gothic, as illustrated 

^ e.g. Bond, Gothic Architecture, 

12 



178 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



in our cathedrals, is a northern adaptation of ideas, in 
themselves independent of the Church, to the requirements 
of mediaeval Catholicism north of the Alps ; Byzantine is 
the one style of architecture that can claim to be ecclesi- 
astical both in its origin and in its intention. 

Previous to the development of the Byzantine style, 
the church building was an adaptation of Eoman archi- 
tecture to Christian uses. At first meetings were held 
in rooms of houses, in a portico of the Jerusalem Temple, 
perhaps in hired halls.^ The worship in the catacombs 
was organised simply because there the brethren could 
assemble at the tombs of the martyrs. Justin Martyr 
declares that the Christians are not dependent on sacred 
places for their meetings, as they can worship anywhere.^ 
Still, as the numbers grew it became necessary to have 
buildings of sufficient size to hold large congregations. At 
the same time the Church began to acquire property in 
buildings. We come across an instance of this during the 
reign of Alexander Severus (a.d. 230) in Eome, and 
again under Aurelian at Antioch (a.d. 270-275), when 
the emperor was appealed to by the orthodox section of 
the Church to decide their right to take possession of the 
building at Antioch which Paul of Samosata had retained 
in defiance of deposition by a council, so long as he had 
enjoyed the patronage of Queen Zenobia. Aurelian 
granted it to those "with whom the Christian bishops of 
Italy and Eome were in correspondence." ^ By this time 
there must have been many important church buildings. 
The Diocletian persecution began with the destruction of 
the great church at Mcodemia, in accordance with an 
imperial edict for the general demolition of churches.'* 
With the time of Constantine we come to the great age 
of church building, and now much more magnificent 
structures appear than those of the period before the 

^ e.g. Acts xix. 9 — but this was for public discussion, not for Church 
worship. 

2 Mo,rtyrdom of Justin and Others, 2. 

3 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 27-30. * lUd. viii. 2. 



BYZANTINE ART 



179 



imperial recognition of Christianity. The emperor him- 
self was foremost in promoting the work, especially in 
his new city of Constantinople, but also at Jerusalem 
and Bethlehem. 

The model for this church architecture was not the 
pagan temple, which was manifestly unsuitable for the pur- 
poses of public worship. The temple was the home of a 
god, not a place of assembly. Here priests sacrificed, and 
worshippers prayed, made vows, brought votive offerings. 
There were special festivals, and some temples were the 
scenes of the celebration of mysteries. None of these 
functions required the large assembly hall needed by a 
Christian congregation. Accordingly, although in a few 
cases, as with the Pantheon at Kome, a pagan temple came 
to be consecrated as a Christian Church, the Christians did 
not take the temple as the model for their place of 
wotship. They found this in the basilica, or Hall of 
Justice, the Eoman law court. In consequence the large 
churches have come to be called " basilicas." Eusebius 
gives us the earliest description of such a church in his 
account of the new building at Tyre, at the dedication of 
which an Arian council was summoned. It stood in a great 
open space enclosed by a wall, and was approached through 
a magnificent portico,^ which led into a quadrangular 
atrium,^ surrounded with interior porticoes, and having a 
fountain in the centre for washing the hands and feet, as 
we see now at Mohammedan mosques ; beyond the atrium 
was the basilica proper,^ a building roofed with cedar wood 
and having side aisles and galleries. There were chairs * 
for the bishop and his clergy round about the altar at the 
end of the church, fenced off from the rest of the nave with 
lattice work.^ The Apostolical Constitutions knows of no 
such separation between the clergy and the laity, showing 
that this significant barrier must have been quite a recent 
innovation, for our present redaction of that work cannot 
be earlier than the fourth century. Yet we read in 

^ irpoirvKov. ^ aWpiov. ^ ^aO'iXeios oIkos. 

* 6p6voi. Eusebius, Hist, Eccl, x, 4, 



180 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



it the following directions for the arrangement of a 
church : — 

" And first, let the building be long, with its head to 
the east, with its vestries on both sides at the east end ; 
and so it will be like a ship.^ In the middle let the 
bishop's chair be placed, and on each side of him let the 
presbytery sit down ; and let the deacons stand near at 
hand, in close and small girt garments, for they are like 
the mariners and managers of the ship : with regard to 
these, let the laity sit on the other side, with all quietness 
and good order. And let the women sit by themselves, 
they also keeping silence. In the middle let the reader 
stand upon some high place." ^ 

This may be taken as the method followed down to 
the fourth century. The separation of the clergy from 
the laity by a screen tended to assimilate the Eucharist 
still more to the pagan mysteries, and to make it a 
sacrifice offered by the priest rather than a meal, partici- 
pation in which by the people is its principal function. 
Although the Western Church adopted the full sacrificial 
idea it did not screen off the clergy as that was done in 
the Eastern Churches ; it was content with a sHght railing, 
leaving the officiating minister full in view. Here we 
have one of the most striking differences between Eastern 
and Western Churches. 

From the time of Constantine to the age of Justinian 
the Eoman style of basiHca prevailed. In the sixth 
century the new order which we know as Byzantine 
appears, and the rise of it synchronises with the great 
impulse to church building that was given by the latter 
omperor. This development may be attributed in part to 
the influence of Persian architecture on the Greek branch of 
the empire.^ But although the stimulus came from the 
Eastern neighbour, the system itself was a legitimate 
development of the preceding Eoman style. That was not 

1 j/aos^nave. ^ Apost. Const, ii. 57. 

3 Fergusson regards Byzantine architecture as a combination of Roman 
and^Sasanian. B)QQ HcmihooTc of 4-^cMpeptuT$^ p. 945. 



BYZANTINE ART 



181 



an original style, nor was it true to any central idea. It 
was mainly a combination of the Eoman arch with the 
Greek column and architrave. But the combination was 
really superfluous, for structurally the arch dispensed with 
the architrave. Accordingly the columns and architraves 
were relegated to the surface of the walls for decorative 
purposes. They were mere survivals, and Byzantine archi- 
tecture dispensed with them altogether as superfluities, 
being content to have plainer exteriors, while the whole 
attention of the decorator was devoted to the elaborate 
adornment of the interior with gold, mosaic, and mural 
painting. 

The Eomans invented the dome and left the most 
magnificent specimen of that daring structure in the Pan- 
theon ; but they did not develop this original idea, seeing 
that they could only apply it to round buildings. Since 
they required length in their basilica they made use of the 
arch for its roof, simply prolonging this in the form of 
a barrel. Now the primary characteristic of Byzantine 
architecture is its development of the method of roofing 
with domes. The most perfect specimen of this work is 
the great church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, which 
it was the pride of Justinian to have built. Two earlier 
churches had been burnt — Constantine's church in A.D. 
404, at the time of Chrysostom, and its successor in 
A.D. 532. Strictly speaking, Justinian's St. Sophia — still 
standing and now used as a mosque — is not typical 
Byzantine architecture. It is quite unique. Nothing of 
the kind had preceded it ; it was never successfully 
imitated. Its famous architect, Anthemius, has the proud 
distinction of having produced a work without peer or 
parallel in all the ages of building. " St. Sophia," says 
M. Bayet, " has the double advantage of marking the 
advent of a new style and reaching at the same time such 
proportions as have never been surpassed in the East." ^ 
The most essential trait of this invention and its crowning 

^VArt Byzantine, p. 41. Cf. L. M. Phillips, "Santa Sophia" in 
Contemporary Eeview, No. 493, pp. 55-76. 



182 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



glory is the adaptation of the dome, which hitherto had 
only appeared on round buildings, to a rectangular building 
by means of a series of lesser domes filling up the angle 
spaces and mounting one above another, till the great 
central dome soars over all, and the whole cluster looked 
at from beneath has the effect of cavernous vaults in a vast- 
ness of lofty space. The Byzantine architecture which 
followed also adapted the dome to rectilineal lines, some- 
times by having the building beneath it octagonal, or by 
means of other devices, but never with any approach to the 
glory of St. Sophia. 

While this structural triumph of genius is the chief 
peculiarity of St. Sophia, another feature of Jus- 
tinian's basilica, being more easily imitated, has become 
a marked characteristic of Byzantine architecture. This 
is its wealth of decorative splendour. In the decoration 
of St. Sophia the richest materials — gold, silver, ivory, 
precious stones — were used with incredible prodigality. 
The great dome was constructed with white tiles from 
Ehodes, one - fifth the weight of ordinary tiles. Soon 
after it had been completed it was thrown down by 
an earthquake. It was rebuilt more strongly, and it 
has stood through nearly fourteen centuries till our own 
time. The ambo placed near the centre, made of most 
beautiful marbles and surmounted with a dome and cross 
of gold, consumed one year's Egyptian revenue. The 
choir was separated from the nave by a solid silver screen. 
The altar was of gold set with jewels beneath a gold 
dome and cross sustained by four silver columns. The 
interior surfaces of domes and walls were completely 
covered with immense mosaics, consisting of majestic 
figures, on a ground in some places of gold, in others of a 
deep blue colour ; some of these however were later than 
the time of Justinian. At night, when the whole building 
was lit up with the scattered radiance of 6,000 candelabras, 
the effect must have been superb. Justinian appears to 
have been more proud of his basilica at Constantinople 
than of the conquests of his great general Belisarius, 



BYZANTINE ART* 



183 



which gave him back for a time the best part of the lost 
western half of the empire, or the codification of Eoman law 
with which his name has become most familiarly associated 
in later history. Truth will not allow us to think that 
this work was executed solely for the glory of God. Very 
significant of the spirit in which all its splendour was 
produced is Justinian's famous explanation in comtempla- 
tion of it : "I have beaten thee, Solomon." ^ 

While in its peculiar glory of construction St. Sophia 
was never followed by subsequent builders, there is a 
church at Salonica that appears to be an imitation of it, 
and from the period of Justinian the Latin basilica form 
declines and we have churches with domes, plain exterior 
walls, and rich interior decoration of gold surfaces, mosaics, 
frescoes, and elaborate capitals — the best known of which is 
St. Mark's at Venice. Earlier Byzantine work is illus- 
trated in the West at Eavenna and in Sicily. It is the 
prevalent style of Greek church architecture. 

Manuscripts now began to imitate the architectural 
decorative style. The Laurentian monastery at Florence 
contains a Syriac MS. executed as early as a.d. 586, 
with beautiful Byzantine decorations on nearly every 
page. 

At the same time sculpture declined. There were 
statues of emperors and bas-reliefs of religious scenes in 
the earlier period, but sculpture was rarely if ever used in 
the East for statues of Christ, the Virgin, or saints. This 
is a point in which the Eastern Church differs from the 
Western, where statuary is a marked feature of church 
decoration and comes into close connection with worship. 
There are no statues in Eastern churches. The icono- 
clastic dispute to which our attention will next be directed, 
though commonly described as concerned with " image 
worship," refers to pictures, the only kind of images 
worshipped in the Greek part of Christendom. There 
never was any Church decree to forbid the use of solid 
images. It appears to have been by a sort of tacit 



184 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



understanding and mutual consent that they were ruled 
out. At first the horror of pagan idolatry was sufficient 
to preclude Christian idolatry. Subsequently, no doubt, 
the fierce Mohammedan war on idols would keep the 
Eastern Christians from following the example of their 
Western brethren for very shame. When the image wor- 
shippers were opposed by the Iconoclasts on the ground 
of idolatry, they could better defend their pictures than 
they could have defended statues which would have been 
very like the pagan idols. Sculpture was now only used for 
bas-reliefs on ambos and for other architectural decorative 
purposes. At Eavenna the human figure is neglected, and 
we have lambs, doves, peacocks, vases of water, mono- 
grams, crosses. A seventh century work at Venice repre- 
sents the apostles as twelve lambs. 

The religious veneration given to pictures never cor- 
responds to their artistic merits. Some of the ugliest 
paintings have received the highest honours owing to their 
antiquity, their legendary origin, or the miraculous powers 
with which they have been credited. In the church of St. 
Sylvester at Eome there is the portrait of Christ said to 
have been sent to Abgarus of Edessa, given to the church 
of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and thence transferred to 
its present resting-place. Among the relics at the Vatican 
is the portrait, according to the legend, impressed on the 
handkerchief which St. Veronica lent to the Saviour on His 
way to the Cross. These two most precious of all pictures, 
regarded from the standpoint of the adoring worshipper, do 
not come into the region of Christian art. They belong 
to the fantastic category of relics. The earliest Christian 
art of which we have remains in the catacombs is entirely 
after the model of contemporary Greek and Eoman painting. 
Its subjects are chiefly Biblical or allegorical — Daniel in 
the Lion's Den, the Good Shepherd, etc. ; and its spirit is 
cheerful. During the days of persecution the Christians did 
not take pleasure in the contemplation of torture ; nor did 
they then represent the ascetic type of face. Pictures of 
the Crucifixion come later, and so do representations of fasting 



BYZANTINE ART 



185 



saints and suffering martyrs. The serene, youthful appear- 
ance of Jesus, sometimes symboKsed by Orpheus, or 
modelled on the type of Apollo, gives place in the Byzantine 
period to the exalted Christ, the King on His throne, 
glorious, majestic, awful to approach. The walls of 
Byzantine churches were decorated in fresco or mosaic 
with illustrations of Old and New Testament history. The 
purpose of this was educational, in order that, as St. Nilus 
said, " Those who could not read the Scriptures could learn 
from the pictures the good actions of those who have 
served God faithfully." For the same reason scenes of 
martyrdom, which the early Christians had avoided, were 
now rendered with brutal realism. Originally the object 
in view was as innocent as our modern illustrated Bibles, 
school-room pictures, and mission-hall lantern exhibitions. 
Then first the picture of Christ was worshipped, then 
pictures of the Virgin and of saints came in for similar 
adoration. 

Although the iconoclastic dispute led to an immense 
destruction of pictures, it does not seem probable that many 
valuable works of art were lost to the world in this way. But 
the victory of the image worshippers gave a great impulse 
to the arts of painting and mosaic work which was followed 
by a veritable renaissance in the Greek Church. Here, 
then, we come upon one of the points at which it is incum- 
bent upon us to free our minds from the narrowness 
of Western prepossessions if we would understand the 
very different course of Church history in the East. We 
are accustomed to regard the period between the short, 
brilHant epoch of Charles the Great and Alcuin on the 
Continent and King Alfred and Bede in England on the 
one hand, and the great revival under St. Bernard, with the 
subsequent rise of scholasticism and Gothic architecture 
on the other, as containing emphatically " the dark ages." 
No doubt the lamp of learning was kept alive by the 
monks even during this gloomy period ; but the flame did 
little more than shed a mild radiance through the dim 
cloisters. Any MS. decoration of this period is Byzantine 



186 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

in character. Western art was dead. But at this very 
time art was reviving in the East and attaining to a life 
and a freedom which it had never reached before. It 
might have advanced still further, had not the Crusades, 
which promised deliverance for the holy sites of the East 
from the desecration of the infidel, brought ruin and misery 
to the Greek Christianfli 



CHAPTER III 



THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 

(a) Nicepliorus, Antirrhetica ; Theopliaiies, Chronographia ; Letters 
of Popes in Mansi, xii and xiii. 

(&) Finlay, History of the Byzantine Empire, Book i. ; Hefele, 
History of the Councils, Eng. trans., vol. v. ; Freeman, 
Historical Essays, Series iii., 1892 ; Oman, Byzantine Empire, 
1886 ; Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, vol. ii., 1889. 

Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the Eastern 
portion of the Eoman Empire centred at Constantinople 
than its repeated revival after what may well have 
appeared to be hopeless decay and ruinous devastation. 
We shall make a great mistake if we think of it as simply 
characterised by Gibbon's classic title. This is by no 
means merely the story of a " Decline and Fall." First we 
have Constantine founding his new city on the Bosphorus 
and going far to make it the centre of the civilised world. 
Then, although the Germanic tribes repeatedly sacked and 
desolated Old Eome, they could do little more in the East 
than make raids into Greece, leaving Constantinople on one 
side as beyond their reach. Two hundred years after the 
founding of this city which stood for all that was most 
splendid and powerful in Eastern Europe, in a time of 
revival, while the great General BeHsarius was regaining 
the lost territory of the empire in Africa and the south- 
west, his master Justinian was beautifying Constantinople 
and other Greek cities with unparalleled architectural 
splendour. Another hundred years passes, and we see the 
Eastern Empire ravaged by Persia and brought to the brink 
of ruin. Then the gifted Heraclius turns the tide of victory, 

187 



188 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



wrests the stolen provinces from the hands of the invader, 
and presses far into his enemy's territory with crushing 
effect. No sooner has this military miracle been achieved 
than a new and totally unexpected enemy comes up from 
the desert and defeats the victorious Byzantine power, to 
the amazement and dismay of the empire. The Arabs, 
fired by the new creed of Islam, tear off Syria, Egypt, and 
southern regions farther West, leaving only a mutilated 
torso to represent the ancient Eoman Empire. Yet in vain 
does the mighty flood gather to sweep this remnant away. 
Constantinople still remains a virgin fortress, impregnable. 
Miserable times follow. The Mohammedans raid Asia Minor ; 
tribes from the Danubian countries pour over Macedonia and 
G-reece ; the empire is virtually reduced to the limits of 
the one city of Constantinople. Now indeed it might 
appear as though the ancient Eoman dominion in the East 
were approaching final dissolution. But that is not to be 
its fate. It has been caUed " effete," but still it displays 
marvellous vitality. 

What is the explanation of this remarkable vitality ? 
In part, the persistence of the empire through all the 
vicissitudes of fortune is to be attributed to its just 
judicature and skilful administration of government. The 
Eoman law was well applied all through these changing 
times, and the machinery of government was worked with 
scientific exactness. Nowhere else in the world was the 
art of government so ably practised. Constantinople was 
the centre of civilisation in politics as well as in art and 
letters. Still, civilisation cannot be self-supporting. If 
the vigour of the early caliphs had been preserved by 
their successors no human power could have saved the 
world from the overthrow of the Christian religion as 
well as the destruction of European culture. Even after 
the ardour of missionary zeal among the Mohammedans 
had cooled they were still formidable, and when rein- 
forced by the Turks, almost invincible. Then deliverance 
came from one of the most powerful men of history. It 
has been pointed out that while Charles Martel has 



THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 



189 



been immortalised for having checked a Moorish raid in 
the West that had nearly spent its force, and that could 
never have resulted in the permanent subjection of Europe, 
a much greater man who achieved a much greater feat 
has missed his laurels, partly because his action as a 
heretic offended the Church, but no doubt partly also 
because his achievements were carried out in the East. 
This man was Leo the Isaurian — Leo iii. — the hero of 
Finlay's Byzantine history, a rough, uneducated peasant 
from a remote part of Asia Minor, who is said to have first 
attracted attention by bringing a present of sheep to the 
reigning emperor, but a man of genius, vigour, and 
character. 

Leo founded a dynasty of able rulers who held the 
Eastern Empire together for generations, while the last 
relics of the Western Empire were in the melting-pot, out 
of which issued the nations of modern Europe. His own 
mighty task was to put an effectual and final stop to the 
Arab encroachments. Syria and Egypt were lost for 
ever; but Leo retained and strengthened all the empire 
north of the Mediterranean, remodelled the system of 
government, and established a military power that put an 
end to the danger of the swamping of Christianity by Islam. 
Here then is a man deserving of the highest honour by the 
Church, since in proving himself the saviour of the empire he 
became also the deliverer of the Church, with which it was 
to so great an extent conterminous. In spite of this fact, 
his own action in the Church called down on his head 
execrations instead of benedictions. Let us proceed to 
examine this remarkable phenomenon. 

Leo seized the imperial power at a crisis of confusion in 
the year 716. Ten years later he issued an edict ordering 
the destruction of the sacred pictures. It has been com- 
monly supposed that he first ordered them to be raised to a 
higher position on the walls so that the people could not 
reach up to kiss them. But the only authority for this 
opinion is the Latin translation of the life of the monk 
Stephen, on which Baronius bases his assertion of it. On 



190 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the other hand, Hefele has demonstrated that this must be 
a mistake. For one thing, many of the pictures were 
frescoes that could not be moved. There is a letter from 
the pope protesting against the destruction of images 
which we must date earlier than the year 730 ; but that 
year is the date commonly assigned for a second edict 
which is taken to be the earliest order for the demolition of 
the pictures. The decree does not appear to have been 
widely operative. But one of the first actions, if not the 
very first, taken in execution of the emperor's orders led to 
serious trouble. It was a daring deed, for it was the 
destruction of the most conspicuous and in some respects 
the most sacred of all the pictures. This was a representa- 
tion of Christ over the great brass gates at Constantinople, 
which was reputed to work miraculous cures. Officials 
mounted a ladder in spite of the screaming protests of a 
mob of women, and one of them rudely smashed his axe 
into the face. Thereupon the exasperated women seized the 
ladder, flung the sacrilegious officials to the ground, and 
murdered them on the spot. Other scenes of violence 
followed in various places. 

Now the question is. What led Leo to take this step 
and so to come into conflict with his people's religion ? 
The action was his own ; if it was a reformation, it was an 
imperial, not a popular reformation. The author of the 
article on Leo ill. in Smith's Dictionary of Biography seems 
to sympathise with the old orthodox view of the case, 
according to which the emperor was a heretic denying the 
actual humanity of Christ, and therefore the possibility of 
representing our Lord by any picture. This was a charge 
frequently brought against the Iconoclasts by the defenders 
of images. It has been pointed out that Leo's old home in 
Isauria was a seat of Monophysitism. But we have no 
proof whatever of the existence of this subtle theological 
motive at the basis of Leo's policy, although it may be 
allowed that the atmosphere of the church of his youth 
would have predisposed him to turn with disgust from the 
materialism of the popular religion. We must look deeper 



THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 



191 



into the history of the whole question in order to under- 
stand the emperor's reasons for his revolutionary policy. 
More than a century before this, Serenus, bishop of Mar- 
seilles, flung all the pictures out of his church, an act 
of vandalism which drew down upon his head a letter of 
mild rebuke from Gregory the Great. The pope then 
took occasion to explain the use of pictures and to guard 
against the idolatrous abuse of them. " You ought not to 
have broken what was put up in the churches, not for 
adoration," he says, " but merely for the promotion of rever- 
ence. It is one thing to worship an image, and another to 
learn represented in the image what we ought to worship. 
For what the Scriptures are for those who can read, that 
a picture is for those who are unable to read; for in 
this also the uneducated see in what way they have to 
walk. In it they read who are not acquainted with the 
Scriptures." ^ 

No statement of the case could be more unexcep- 
tionable. The stiffest Puritan would be hard put to 
it to answer such an argument. Not only stained-glass 
windows, but illustrated Bibles and lantern services are 
justified to-day on similar grounds. But the pope's argu- 
ment is one thing, and the people's practice another. 
In point of fact, throughout the East at the time of Leo 
the pictures were worshipped. The physical act of kissing 
them was called worship, and this act was made illegal 
by the iconoclastic emperors. But over and above that, 
pictures and relics were often treated as fetishes and 
venerated for their supposed miraculous cures. No doubt 
there would be all gradations from the aesthetic pursuit 
of art among the cultured and the simple contemplation 
of pictorial lessons on the part of the devout, to the 
grossest idolatry and magic-mongery among the more 
degraded and superstitious. It was against the popular 
adoration of the images that Leo was fighting. 

We must remember that at this very time the em- 
peror's great rival was the caliph, and the standing 

» Lib. ix. Ep. 9. 



192 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



menace to Christianity the religion of Islam which made it 
the first duty of the faithful to extirpate idolatry. The 
case for Mohammedanism was strengthened by the exist- 
ence of idolatry in the Christian Church, and a wise Chris- 
tian ruler might well be anxious to remove that scandal 
from his cause. Only two years before Leo took action 
the caliph was vigorously engaged in destroying the 
pictures among the Christian churches in his dominion. 
Naturally enough this similarity of policy led the image 
worshippers to accuse their fellow Christian Iconoclasts of 
treasonable connections with the Mohammedans. At the 
seventh oecumenical council (II Nicsea, A.D. 787) the monk 
John accused Constantino, bishop of Nacolia in Phrygia, of 
collusion with the caliph. This bishop, who had been 
actively engaged in tearing down the images in his own 
district, came to Constantinople to consult the Patriarch 
Germanus on the subject. He got no encouragement in 
that quarter. Germanus was a staunch supporter of image 
worship, and in the case of this bold bishop we have a rare 
instance of independence on the part of the head ecclesiastic 
of the Greek Church at Constantinople in opposition to the 
emperor, which is in marked contrast to the too common 
subservience of the Constantinople patriarchs. But that 
fact makes it all the more remarkable that Leo should have 
so acted as to stir up a hornets' nest just when he was 
consoUdating his power for the security of the empire. 
The fair and reasonable explanation is that which is also 
most simple and straightforward, namely, that we should 
accept the emperor's own declared motive as genuine. He 
regarded image worship as idolatry. He saw that Chris- 
tianity as a spiritual faith was becoming swamped and 
drowned in the grossest superstition. The pictures were 
actually idols. The people were satisfied to kiss and adore 
them; in illness they resorted to them for miraculous 
cures ; if they had any other religious practice to which 
they attached weight, it was the treasuring of relics. 
Perhaps the reason why Leo did not attack this also was 
that it was practised in private. The relics were the 



THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 



193 



Christian Lares and Penates. They were, like Eachel's 
teraphim, survivals in the home of a kind of superstition 
not so openly observed in public. But the pictures were 
in the churches or out in the open air, and the adoration 
of them was public. Here was an overt public super- 
stition which could be directly attacked. That this is not 
too harsh a verdict on the popular image worship is proved 
by the serious commotion that the emperor's policy aroused. 
If no more than Gregory the Great's didactic use of pictures 
had been in practice, people would not have been so pro- 
foundly stirred at the removal of their lesson illustrations. 
What roused them to fury was the idea that the emperor 
was taking away their idols, their gods. Thus this very 
passion of opposition justified Leo's theory of the system 
he was attacking. In a word, Leo was a reformer, a 
protestant, a man who saw the fatal character of the 
materialistic religion of his day, and endeavoured to alter it. 

Nevertheless Leo made two serious mistakes. First, 
he acted solely on his own initiative and by force. His 
reformation was purely a State action ; there was no popular 
movement supporting it. Such a reformation, coming on to 
the Church from without, does not stir up an internal 
revival of better things. Secondly, it was negative, only 
destructive ; it did nothing to substitute a new living 
religion for the old superstition. Leo was no Luther. It 
is the positive revival of religion alone that can effect 
genuine reformation. 

Still, while we must admit these two damaging factory 
of the case, we may hold that the emperor's motive was 
good and honest and enlightened. In point of fact, there 
was some revival of religion under the iconoclastic em- 
perors, and it was accompanied by a betterment of morals. 
The period that followed Leo's reforms was a real im- 
provement on that which preceded it. Mr. Bury holds 
that the Iconoclasts should not be regarded as Puritans ; 
that it would be more correct to consider them to be 
Rationalists.^ Certainly they did not anticipate the grim 

^ Bury, History of Later Roman Empire, vol. ii. p. 429. 
^3 



194 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



rigour which is associated with Puritanism in Sir Walter 
Scott's novels. The reverse was the case ; they introduced 
gay living into court and city, and set their faces against 
the ascetic ideal cherished by the monks. Nevertheless 
they were not unlike the true English Puritans of Eliza- 
beth's time, the men who discarded " vain traditions " in 
order to have the Church governed by " the pure word of 
God," and who opposed the more materialistic ritual in 
favour of inward religion. 

It has been maintained that one aim of Leo and his 
successors in suppressing image worship was to oppose the 
influence of the monks. Now it is a fact that, while the 
parish priests for the most part submitted tamely to the 
imperial orders, as became government officials, the monks 
stoutly resisted them, for it was in the monasteries that the 
liberty of the Church was cherished. 

Besides, while the monks opposed imperial interference 
in ecclesiastical affairs, they were out of favour with the 
authorities on other grounds also. Monasticism was the 
deadliest enemy of militarism, and that in two ways. The 
monks would not fight ; and therefore the monasteries were 
draining the empire of a large part of its able-bodied 
citizens, and these especially the men of grit. At the 
same time their celibate life was keeping down the popula- 
tion, and so, as has been pointed out earlier in this book, 
rendering the provinces too weak to withstand the onrush 
of teeming multitudes of more prolific races that hovered 
on their borders. 

While, however, all this is worthy of consideration, it 
will not account for Iconoclasm, for Leo could have found 
other means of opposing monasticism, and means which 
would not have enlisted the populace in its favour. It 
was bad policy to select a ground of attack which involved 
a direct assault on the religion of the people. Turn where 
we may for an explanation, we are driven back to the con- 
clusion that the iconoclastic enterprise was a reformation 
movement, the aim of which was to save Christianity from 
degenerating into the merely mechanical performances of 



THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 



195 



idolatry. It may be remarked as a further confirmation of 
this position that both Leo and his son Constantine opposed 
Maryolatry.i 

The execution of Leo's orders met with violent opposi- 
tion ; but as this was combined with resistance to a harsh 
and burdensome system of taxation, it is difficult to appor- 
tion the relative forces of the two influences. There were 
risings in Italy and in Greece. The imperial fleet in the 
Cyclades mutinied, and was accompanied by one of the 
imperial armies in an attack on Constantinople, carrying 
with it a man named Cosmas, whom the rebels elected 
emperor. The expedition turned out to be a disastrous 
failure. Leo defeated the fleet on its approach to Con- 
stantinople by means of " Greek Fire." The commander 
Agallianos plunged fully armed into the sea and was 
drowned. Cosmas was taken alive and executed. So was 
another leader. But Leo treated the rest of the insurgents 
with leniency. His action throughout was milder than 
that of Constantine, his son and successor. 

Writers of later times ^ have charged Leo with one 
act of inconceivable barbarity. Near the bronze bazaar 
at Constantinople was an imperial institution consisting 
of a library and a theological college, presided over by 
a scholar entitled the " (Ecumenical Doctor," with whom 
twelve learned men were associated for the instruction of 
the students, the whole body being supported from the 
public funds. Leo was in the habit of consulting these 
professors, and he naturally turned to them to join him 
in his policy of reform. It would have been a great point 
to have gained a verdict of theological science from such 
an authority. That however was refused him. Then, 
according to the incredible story of the later writers, the 
emperor had faggots heaped against the building, set 
them on fire, and so burnt the library and with it the 
" OEcumenical Doctor " and his twelve colleagues. No con- 
temporary writer mentions any such atrocity. Theophanes 

* For proofs see authorities cited in Bury, op. cit. vol, ii. p. 428, note 1. 
' e.g. Zonaras and George the Sinner. 



196 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



merely remarks curtly that Leo put an end to "pious 
education" and shut up the educational institutions.^ 

In other matters Leo now proceeded further towards 
what we know as Protestantism. He gave up the inter- 
cession of the saints and the worship of relics.^ At first 
he had only interfered with pictures outside the churches ; 
subsequently he carried on his Iconoclasm within their 
walls. A later decree forbade anybody even to make a 
picture of a saint, martyr, or angel ; all these things were 
accursed. This was a condemnation of sacred art in itself. 

It was a great annoyance to Leo that Germanus the 
patriarch of Constantinople stoutly opposed his reforming 
action, and quite contrary to precedent for this man to be 
showing a spirit of independence more like that of his 
brother at Eome than anything the Eastern Empire was 
accustomed to. The emperor sent for Grermanus (a.d. 729) 
and expostulated with him, but in vain. Leo even appears 
to have tried to entangle the intrepid old man in a charge 
of treason ; but this unworthy device also failed.^ In 
January, A.D. 730, Leo held a Silentium^ in support of his 
policy. This was a civil council that had no authority 
over the Church. Nevertheless it was impossible for the 
patriarch to retain his office in face of the government's 
disapproval, and therefore he quietly retired. Here we 
see the difference between the East and the West. A 
Eoman pontiff would have held his ground and defied the 
emperor to do his worst. Germanus was as intrepid as 
any pope. But it is one thing to be defiant to a distant 
potentate when supported by enthusiastic followers in a 
position of virtual independence, which was the case with 
the pope in the West; and quite another thing to show 
independence under the very shadow of the imperial palace 
in the East, where for generations the Church has meekly 
submitted to the patronage of the State. Germanus never 
wavered from his convinced policy. When, at last, a 
venerable man ninety years old, he saw that he could 

^ Theophanes, i. 623. ^ j^^^^ g25. » Ibid. p. 626 flf. 

^ i.e. A consultative assembly. 



THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 



197 



never hope to give effect to that policy, he resigned his 
office. 

Gregory m. was now pope at Rome. He had sent to 
Leo for the emperor's oonfirmation of his election, and he 
had not been consecrated till it had arrived. This was 
the last occasion on which a pope solicited approval of 
his appointment from Constantinople. Now Leo*s action 
in the iconoclastic crusade greatly angered Gregory, who 
assembled a comicil at Eome which excommunicated the 
Iconoclasts. The emperor replied by confiscating all the 
pope's estates in the Eastern provinces, and by separating 
the ecclesiastical government of south Italy, Sicily, and 
other parts farther east from the jurisdiction of Eome, and 
transferring it to the patriarch of Constantinople. Gregory 
wrote to Germanus saying that if anybody misuses the 
words of the Old Testament, which were only directed 
against idolatry, " we can only hold him to a barking dog." 
This was before the Silentium. After that council had 
been followed by the resignation of Germanus, the pope 
wrote to the emperor explaining his views and justifying 
the use of images. He urged that this did not involve 
idolatry. The Israelites were commanded to make images 
of cherubim. Leo had compared himself to Uzziah — he 
meant Hezekiah, who destroyed the brazen serpent. " Yes," 
says Gregory, " Uzziah was your brother, and Hke you he 
did violence to the priests." ^ 

Leo m. died in the year 741 and was succeeded by his 
son Constantino v., nicknamed " Copronymus," after an 
infantile misdemeanour which occurred when the patriarch 
was plunging him into the baptismal font.^ The name 
clung to him in later years and was used as an encourage- 
ment for the foulest calumnies concerning his conduct. No 
emperor was ever bespattered with more disgusting accusa- 
tions, but seeing that these were flung at him by bitter 
enemies in the fury of the iconoclastic contest no historical 
value can be attached to them. The devastating plague 

^ Mansi, xii. p. 959 tt". ; Hardouin, iv. p. 1 ff. 
' Theophaiies, p. 615. 



198 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



which swept over the empire and reached Constantinople in 
747 was regarded by the populace as a judgment of heaven 
on the sin of Iconoclasm. Unfortunately Constantino 
cannot be exonerated from the charge of cruelty. He went 
to greater lengths than his father in the suppression of 
image worship, and even carried on a severe persecution to 
the extent of torture. The protestant spirit of the icono- 
clastic movement which appeared in Leo was also seen in 
Constantino, for he was accused of rejecting the intercession 
of the Virgin Mary, though it was allowed that he called 
her the mother of God — as would be expected if there was 
any connection between Iconoclasm and Monophysitism ; 
and, further, he was charged with denying the transference 
of the merits of the martyrs. 

Constantine was superseded for a time by his brother- 
in-law Artavasdos, who was acknowledged by the pope and 
who restored the pictures to the churches. On recovering 
his power, Constantine had the eyes of Artavasdos and his 
two sons put out and then exhibited the miserable men in 
triumph at the chariot races, after which they were im- 
prisoned in a monastery. 

Constantine now consolidated his government and 
proved himself to be a vigorous ruler in Church as well 
as in State affairs. More than ever the ecclesiastical 
discipline of the East came to be concentrated at Constanti- 
nople and controlled by the emperor. He ordered the 
metropolitans and provincials to hold provincial synods, 
and convoked a general council which met at Constanti- 
nople in the year 754, and was attended by 338 bishops.^ 
But though this was probably the largest Church council 
that had ever been held, the patriarchs of Antioch, Alex- 
andria, and Jerusalem — •being now in the Saracen dominions 
— were unable to attend it ; nor were any bishops from 
the Western Church present. It could not therefore be 
taken as an oecumenical council. This council forbade the 
employment of images and pictures in churches as a pagan 
practice, condemned the use of the crucifix, proscribed " the 

^ Theophanes, p. 654. 



THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS 



199 



godless art of painting," and ordered all who made cruci- 
fixes or pictures for worship in the churches to be excom- 
municated by the Church and punished by the State. Two 
years later image worship was proscribed with greater 
severity than ever, and so were both the use of relics and 
the practice of praying to the saints. Many monks and 
clergy were banished for their disobedience to these orders ; 
some were flogged, tortured, and mutilated. 

The most popular defender of image worship was the 
abbot Stephen, who has been so highly honoured in the 
Greek Church as a saint and martyr that he bears the name 
of " Stephen the younger " by comparison with the proto- 
martyr. According to the story of his life written half a 
century later, in the year 763 Constantine Copronicus sent 
an order to this monk, who was resident at Mount St. 
Auxentius, to sign the decree of the Constantinople council. 
On his refusal he was dragged by soldiers from his cave and 
imprisoned with some other monks for six days without 
food. Liberated for a time, he was seized again on libellous 
charges, dragged once more from his cave, beaten, tortured, 
and banished to the island of Proconnesus in the Propontis. 
Here a number of monks, driven from their cells by the 
persecution, gathered round their hero and leader. Thus 
his place of exile was becoming a rallying point for the 
forces of opposition to the government policy, or, as it would 
be regarded at headquarters, a nest of sedition. So Stephen 
was arrested a third time, bound hand and foot, and carried 
off to Constantinople, where he was flung into the great 
prison of the Praetorium, together with 342 mutilated 
monks, some of whom had had their ears, noses, or hands 
cut off, their eyes gouged out, or their beards smeared with 
pitch and fired. The saint turned the prison into a 
monastery for worship and meditation. He was put on his 
trial and condemned to death. A saying attributed to 
Constantine may help to account for the vindictive fury 
with which Stephen was treated. Seeing how popular the 
monk was and how obstinately he maintained his cause, 
Constantine is reported to have declared that Stephen was 



200 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

emperor and that it was only this man who was obeyed. 
Thereupon — as in the case of Henry ii.'s impatient ex- 
clamation about Thomas a Becket — obsequious attendants 
took action. The imperial bodyguard dashed into the 
prison, dragged the bold monk out into the street, and 
there battered him to death with clubs and stones.^ 

Euthless conduct such as this provoked fierce opposition 
on the part of the image worshippers. The patriarch of 
Constantinople was suspected of taking part in a con- 
spiracy against the emperor. He was deposed, tried, and 
condemned to death. Thereupon he confessed himself an 
Iconoclast ; but no mercy was shown him. He was set on 
an ass with his face towards the tail and conducted in this 
insulting way to the amphitheatre, where he was beheaded. 

The persecution had now become much more than an 
iconoclastic reformation. It had developed into a brutal 
attack on monasticism. The victims were no longer painted 
pictures; they were living men. As at the English Ee- 
formation, there was a " dissolution of monasteries.'* But 
this was less general, and more cruel. Where the monks 
were turned out of their monasteries, these buildings were 
converted into taverns. Constantino degraded himself in 
his attempt to degrade his ecclesiastical enemies. He com- 
pelled a number of monks to march round the circus at 
Constaninople hand in hand with women — either nuns or 
persons of less respectable character ; ^ it is not clear which. 

^ Vita Stephani in Analeeta, pp. 546 ff. Hefele admits that this is 
largely legendary {ITist. of Councils, v. p. 323). 

2 Theophanes, p. 676 ; Nicephorus, p. 83 ; Zonaras, xv. 5. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 

(a) Nicepliorus, Antirrhetica ; Theophanes, Chronographia ; John 
of Damascus {Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers) ; Theodore of 
Studium (Migne, xcix.) ; Mansi, xiii. 

(&) Finlay, Hist. Byzantine Empire, Book i. ; Hefele, History of 
the Councils, Eng. Trans., vol. v. ; Bury, Later Rom. Empire, 
vol. ii., 1889 ; Alice Gardner, St. Theodore of Studium, 1905. 

The war of the Byzantine emperors against image worship 
falls into two periods, being broken by an interval of a 
generation during which the practice was revived and 
encouraged by the government. The first period, consist- 
ing of the reigns of Leo the Isaurian and his son Constan- 
tine Copronicus, lasted for nearly half a century (from 
Leo's first decree in a.d. 726 to the death of Constantine 
in 775). This was followed by thirty-eight years of peace 
to the image worshippers, when the custom so dear to the 
hearts of the monks and the populace flourished again under 
the favour of the court as well as with the unvarying 
approval of the Church. Then another strong emperor, 
Leo the Armenian, returned to the example of his name- 
sake from Isauria and renewed the attack on the pictures, 
and his policy was continued by his two successors; but 
this second iconoclastic campaign only lasted for twenty- 
nine years (a.d. 813—842), during most of which it was 
carried on very mildly ; and in the end image worship was 
effectually restored. It has since continued for more than 
a thousand years down to our own time, and it is now one 
of the chief characteristics of the Greek Church. In other 
words, the premature reformation, twice attempted, and 

SOI 



202 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



each time successful as a government measure, never laid 
hold of the Church, and ultimately it failed entirely, the 
old order re-establishing itself as completely as though 
nothing had ever happened to interfere with it. Therefore 
we must regard Iconoclasm as an episode, not as a stage in 
the development of Church history. Nevertheless it is 
extremely suggestive, for both the attack on image worship 
and the defence are symptomatic ; by means of them we 
can learn much about the actual condition of Christendom 
in the East during a little-studied period. The iconoclastic 
emperors, for the most part, were strong rulers who success- 
fully defended the empire against the encroachment of 
foreign powers and who maintained good order within its 
borders. During their reigns the law was justly adminis- 
tered ; security of life and property — except in the case 
of the persecuted monks — was well guarded; and the 
morals of the people were higher than at any other time in 
the history of the Eastern Church. On the other hand — 
and here we come to the paradox of the situation — the 
defence of image worship was carried on with genuine 
religious motives on the part of the ecclesiastical leaders. 
The most cultivated and devoted Churchmen of the day 
were champions of what the Iconoclasts stigmatised as 
" idolatry." Further, it is a curious fact that, while each 
of the two reforming campaigns was initiated by a powerful 
emperor — the first by Leo the Isaurian and the second by 
Leo the Armenian, each of the reactionary movements 
sprang from the energy of a woman — the first from that of 
the Empress Irene and the second from that of the Empress 
Theodora. Unhappily we cannot ascribe to these ladies 
very lofty motives, at all events not to the first of them. 

Leo IV., the son and successor of Constantine Copro- 
nicus (a.d. 775), was in delicate health during his short 
reign, and when he died leaving as his heir his son Con- 
stantine VI., Porphyrogenitus — (born in the purple, i.e. the 
purple chamber at the palace), then only ten years old, the 
regency devolved on one of the many remarkable women 
who figure so conspicuously in the history of the Byzantine 



THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 203 

Empire. This was the cultivated and brilliant Athenian 
beauty, Irene, who was only twenty-eight years of age when 
she became a widow. Of Greek blood, she found in her own 
people the sympathy and support she wanted in order to 
maintain her independence against her late husband's family 
and racial connections. The iconoclastic emperors were of 
Asiatic origin — Isaurian and Armenian ; the chief supporters 
of image worship were found among the Greeks. It was 
good policy therefore for Irene to favour the icons. She 
was a woman of illimitable ambition, an ambition that 
smothered the instincts of motherhood. Discovering a 
conspiracy against her power instigated by her brother-in- 
law, Caesar Nicephorus, she forced Leo's five brothers into 
the priesthood and compelled them to officiate at the high 
altar of St. Sophia during the Christmas ceremonies. 
Meanwhile Irene was actively engaged in the restoration of 
image worship. With this end in view she was just as 
Erastian as the iconoclastic emperors had been. It was 
all government action and forcible interference with ecclesi- 
astical affairs. Irene deposed the patriarch Paul who was an 
Iconoclast, and nominated for the head of the Greek Church 
Tarasius, a man of high reputation for learning and char- 
acter, but a civilian, the secretary of the imperial cabinet. 
The assembly of citizens to whom the empress proposed her 
candidate elected him by acclamation. He was a popular 
personage and the empress's policy was also popular. But 
had the case been otherwise resistance to the court would 
have been regarded as preposterous. Tarasius was reluctant 
to take office, and he refused to do so till his election had 
been confirmed by a council — consisting, of course, of image 
worshippers. The newly appointed patriarch then revived 
the intercourse between Constantinople and the other 
patriarchates which had been broken off during the domin- 
ance of the iconoclastic emperors. Thus the schism was 
brought to an end, and the Eoman Pope Hadrian wrote a 
joyful letter at the return of the empire to the fold of 
orthodoxy, in the course of which he defended the practice 
of image worship by an appeal to Scripture, quoting, among 



204 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



other instances, the case of Jacob kissing the top of his 
staff.^ 

Tarasius desired to have the matter finally settled by 
an CBCumenioal council. The empress agreed, and the 
council assembled first at Constantinople, where it was 
violently broken up, and then at Nicaea, in the year 787. 
This was the so-called "seventh general council," and the- 
second council of Nicsea. Neither Irene nor her young son 
were present in person ; but they were represented by high 
officers of State. Nicephorus, the historian, who after- 
wards became patriarch of Constantinople, was the secretary. 
There were two delegates from Eome, and to them was 
assigned the first place of honour as representing the pope. 
Next came Tarasius as the bishop of " New Eome." Two 
Oriental monks named John and Thomas were supposed 
to represent the absent patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, 
and J erusalem. The virtual imprisonment of these patriarchs 
within the dominions of the Saracens would have prevented 
their coming even if they had been summoned ; but as 
things turned out they were not even communicated with, 
the messengers finding that they could not get safely 
through to them.2 All the other members of the council 
were subjects of the Byzantine Empire. Therefore, with 
the all-important exception of the presence of the Eoman 
delegates, this second council of Nicsea was no more 
oecumenical than the iconoclastic council of Constantinople 
in the reign of Constantino Copronicus. Nevertheless, 
there can be no doubt that it registered the prevalent 
opinion of the Church. The enlightened iconoclastics had 
proved themselves to be a minority with no popular power ; 
they had only succeeded for a time by means of the strong 
arm of the State. The second council of Nictea carried the 
people with it when deciding positively in favour of the 

^ *' Adoravit fastigium virgse ejus," Heb. xi. 21 (Vulg.). 

* Nevertheless Hefele considers that the two monks had a right to 
represent the absent patriarchs, because they "represented in fact the 
faith of the three patriarchs in regard to images and the veneration of 
them " [Hist. Councils, vol. v. p. 361). 



THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 205 



pictures. It argued that " the oftener one gazed on these 
representations, the more would the gazer be stirred to the 
resemblance of the originals and the imitation of them, and 
to offer his greeting and reverent homage to them,^ not the 
actual worship,^ which belonged to the godhead alone," 
... for " whosoever does reverence ^ to an image does 
reverence to the person represented by it." * 

The pope adopted the decrees of the council, and thus 
Irene had her ecclesiastical policy justified by the Church 
voting at a great council and speaking through its chief 
pontiff. Her personal history is "an ugly commentary on 
these transactions. She was so greedy of her authority 
that she was unwilling for her son Constantine to take up 
the government when he came of age. For five years he 
succeeded in having the upper hand. Then he misused his 
opportunity by putting out the eyes of one of his uncles, 
Nicephorus the Caesar, and cutting out the tongues of four 
other uncles. These crimes might have been condoned by 
the cruel custom of the times. But when Constantine 
divorced the Empress Maria, whom his tyrannical mother 
had forced upon him, and married Theodota, one of his 
mother's maids of honour, that ecclesiastical offence alienated 
the Church authorities and destroyed his popularity. Irene 
came back into power. Thereupon she showed her vindic- 
tiveness, or at least her unappeasable ambition, by having 
Constantine's eyes put out. This unnatural mother who 
blinded her own son has been canonised by the Greek 
Church for her restoration of image worship. She was 
more reasonably appreciated in her lifetime. Dethroned 
by a court conspiracy (a.d. 802), she was exiled to the 
island of Lesbos, where she died a few months later ; and 
Nicephorus, the imperial treasurer, who had led the con- 
spiracy, succeeded to the empire. He proved to be a 
man of moderate ideas, who wished to maintain image 
worship without persecuting its opponents ; but, like Zeno 
and Justinian, he tried to bring about peace by forcibly 

• ^ aairaa [ibv Koi Ti/irjTiKTjv wpoo'KvvTjarcv, ^ tt]v d\7]6ivT]v Xarpelap. 

^ irpoaKvvei, ♦ Mansi, 374, et seq. 



I . 

206 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

silencing discussion. Where two strong men had failed it 
is not surprising that this weaker ruler did not succeed. 
In pursuit of his policy of encouraging image worship, on 
the death of Tarasius, Nicephorus appointed his namesake, 
known to us as Nicephorus the historian, to be patriarch of 
Constantinople, a man of principle and a conscientious 
supporter of the orthodox position at the return of Icono- 
clasm (A.D. 806). 

A disastrous war with the Bulgarians, in which the 
Emperor Nicephorus was slain, led to a revolution, in con- 
sequence of which his son Staviacius, after having been 
acknowledged by the soldiers for two months, was sent to 
a monastery, there to die of his wounds ; and the previous 
emperor's son-in-law Michael I. was set on the throne. 
This revolution was carried out by the bigoted party of the 
image worshippers who had resented the comprehensive 
policy of the late emperor. But Michael turned out to be 
a weak ruler. He was regarded as pious, and undoubtedly 
he pleased the Church by granting out of the State funds 
lavish doles to her charities and to leading clergy ; but 
since he made similar grants to high-placed court function- 
aries and chief officers of the army, such action was 
remarkably like bribery. Another of his pious deeds was 
to cover the tomb of Tarasius with silver, in grateful 
acknowledgment of the kindness of the dead patriarch — 
now prayed to as a saint — for causing a severe epidemic to 
spread among the invading Bulgarians. But best of all, he 
won the admiration of the orthodox by yielding to their 
persuasion in abandoning his liberal policy and persecuting 
the supporters of Iconoclasm. This fact shows that the 
movement which Leo the Isaurian had commenced as a 
piece of high-handed imperial policy, despotically forced on 
the Church, was not so entirely without popular support 
as its opponents contended ; or, at all events, that it had 
gained some friends in the course of the eighty years that 
had intervened. A number of Iconoclasts together with 
Paulicians and other heretics were persecuted, some even 
being put to death. 



THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 207 



Then came the reaction, originated on other grounds. 
Michael was quite incompetent to sustain the war with the 
Bulgarians, and in order to save the empire the soldiers 
elected one of their generals, Leo the Armenian, as its head 
(a.d. 813), sending Michael like his predecessor into a 
monastery. The new emperor proved his strength at once 
by refusing the patriarch's demand that he should follow 
his predecessor's example and sign a declaration of ortho- 
doxy — which, under the circumstances, meant image wor- 
ship. In course of time he brought about an effective 
reorganisation of civil government, and throughout his 
reign he maintained good order and the regular adminis- 
tration of justice in the law courts. Thus in the second 
iconoclastic period, as in the first, we see under the reform- 
ing emperors both good government and respectable morals. 
Leo appears to have been in sympathy with Iconoclasm 
from the first, although as a calm, statesman-like ruler, 
he desired to act with moderation and to maintain the 
peace of the Church. But he was urged to take stronger 
measures against the image worshippers by a remarkable 
man known as John the Grammarian. 

We have now reached the period of Alfred and Alcuin 
in the West, when a temporary revival of letters seemed to 
promise an end to the intellectual slumber that was settling 
down over Europe — a promise doomed to miserable dis- 
appointment. At this very time in the Eastern Church 
we have John the Grammarian, a scholar, versed in the 
science of his day, which he appears to have acquired from 
the Arabians. Of course he was accused of magic by the 
orthodox. But John was an abbot and of an illustrious 
family. With him were associated other learned men who 
also repudiated the superstition of image worship. The re- 
formers were numerically weak ; but morally and intellectually 
they were worthy of respect — a small body of clear-sighted, 
cultivated men, who strove in vain to stem the tide of the 
popular religion, which consisted of materialistic ideas and 
sensuous ceremonies. These scholars persuaded Leo to have 
the pictures removed from the churches which were in 



208 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



possession of the clergy of their own party. Even that 
mild action — a trifle in comparison with the tyrannical 
persecution by Constantine Copronymus — provoked violent 
opposition on the part of the monks. The soldiers re- 
taliated. A riotous body of men from the army broke into 
the patriarchal palace at Constantinople and destroyed the 
sacred pictures that adorned its walls. Passion was rising 
to fever-heat on both sides. Then, much against his in- 
clination, Leo found it necessary to take action. He deposed 
the patriarch Nicephorus — a deed for which we may be 
selfishly grateful, since it gave this leading actor in the events 
of his times leisure to write his history. The emperor 
appointed a layman Theodotus Mellissenus to the vacant 
post ; and he summoned what he wished to be regarded as 
a general council at Constantinople (a.d. 816), which con- 
firmed the decision of the earlier iconoclastic council in the 
same city (that held A.D. 754), condemned image worship, 
and anathematised the patriarchs Tarasius and Nicephorus 
and all image worshippers. Eecalcitrant clergy were to be 
deposed ; but there were few such, for most submitted. 
We have seen that this was the normal practice in the 
Byzantine Empire. Now again, as on previous occasions, the 
stubborn opposition came from the independent monks, not 
from the demure State-endowed and State-regulated clergy. 

Leo was rewarded for his vigorous reforms in the civil 
service by assassination, and was succeeded by one of the 
conspirators, a trusted friend — Michael ii., nicknamed 
"the Stammerer" (a.d. 820). This emperor was tolerant 
towards both parties, since he wished to be concihatory, 
although he leaned towards the iconoclastic policy. He 
died in the year 829, and was succeeded by Theophilus, 
who at first followed the same line of pohcy, but tliree 
years after his accession issued a decree prohibiting image 
worship, which was executed in some instances with much 
harshness.^ Lazarus, a famous painter, was imprisoned 

^ Gontinuator, 62 ; Cedreiius, 514. We now have to part company with 
our two chief authorities for the iconoclastic period — Theophanes and 
Nicephorus. 



THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 209 

and scourged, and two monks, Theophanes the Singer and 
Theodore Graptus, were tortured — the latter receiving his 
surname from the fact that some verses were branded on 
his forehead. A little later John the Grammarian was 
elected patriarch and was induced to summon a synod 
which condemned image worship. 

On the death of Theophilus (a.d. 842), his widow 
Theodora, as regent to her son Michael ill., surnamed " The 
Drunkard," restored the image worship and so put an end 
to the second iconoclastic campaign. Within a few months 
of her accession to power she summoned a council, which 
confirmed the decision of the second council of Nicsea. 
Still, the fires of the controversy were only smouldering ; 
for in the year 860 the patriarch Photius proposed to Pope 
Nicholas another council against the Iconoclasts, which met 
in the following year. But, though this council deposed 
Ignatius, who had supplanted Photius, we have no record 
of any reference to images during the course of its pro- 
ceedings. Eight years later (a.d. 869) yet another synod 
denounced the Iconoclasts and upheld the pictures as useful 
for the " instruction " of the people. Henceforth they have 
hung on the walls of Greek churches, undisturbed except 
by the ravages of war and time, and adored by successive 
generations of the devout. 

Although the iconoclastic movement sprang from the 
enlightened pohcy of two dynasties of strong emperors, 
while the practice of image worship was maintained by the 
ignorant populace and the fanatical monks, it must not be 
supposed that the latter lacked oapable and high-minded 
defenders. On the contrary, the ablest theologian in each 
of the two periods of Iconoclasm was a champion of image 
worship. To the first period belongs John of Damascus, 
and to the second Theodore of Studium, the only church- 
men of permanent fame who appeared in the Eastern Church 
during the eighth and ninth centuries. 

John of Damascus is known as the last of the Fathers. 
He it was who summed up the results of the previous 
centuries of controversy and gave to his Church the dogmas 
14 



210 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



of orthodoxy in the stereotyped form which has character- 
ised them during all subsequent ages. There is much that 
is mythical in the story of his life. We cannot fix the date 
of his birth ; but it is clear that he was ordained before 
the year 735. His death occurred sometime between the 
years 759 and 767. Thus his active life coincides with 
the period of the great iconoclastic persecution beginning 
in the reign of Leo the Isaurian and extending through the 
greater part of that of Constantino Copronymus. John 
came from a Christian family in the city of Damascus 
bearing the Arabic name of Mansour, and he held for a 
time an honourable post in the court of the caliph. From 
this place of shelter he launched his attacks on Leo the 
Isaurian with impunity, when that emperor was engaged 
in putting down picture worship. Unable to get at him 
directly, Leo is said to have sent the caliph a forged letter 
in the handwriting of John offering to let the emperor into 
Damascus. Thereupon, we are told, the caliph had John's 
right hand cut off. It was restored to him in response to 
his prayer to the Virgin. Subsequently John retired to the 
famous monastery of Mar Saba, still overhanging the gorge 
of the Kidron in the wilderness of Judaea. The monks 
were afraid to receive so important a personage from the 
court till they had tested his humility. This they did by 
sending him back to Damascus with a load of baskets manu- 
factured at the monastery. There is no reason to question 
the second story simply because we must regard the earlier 
narrative as legendary, for truth and fiction are always 
mixed up in these lives of saints, and the ordeal was 
quite characteristic. John stood this and every other 
test that was devised to try him, after which he was 
duly accepted. He lived the rest of his days in his 
out of the world retreat, composing hymns and theological 
works. 

The most important of the works of John of Damascus 
is the De Fide Orthodoxa} What the Summa of Thomas 
Aquinas is for the Eoman Church and what Calvin's 



THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 211 



Institutes is for the Eeformed Church, that is this work 
for the Greek Church — the most orderly and systematic 
exposition of the accepted theology. It is divided into 
four books : Book I. discusses the doctrine of God and the 
Trinity ; Book IT. is concerned with Creation and the 
Nature of Man ; Book III. states the doctrine of Christ 
and the Incarnation, including the relation of the two 
natures and the two wills, Mary as the mother of God, the 
death of our Lord and His descent into Hades ; Book IV. 
carries on the doctrine of Christ to His resurrection and 
reign ; but it is chiefly occupied with a number of 
miscellaneous subjects — such as faith, worship, images, 
Scripture, sin, virginity, resurrection, etc. Like Augustine, 
who gave its character to Latin theology, especially 
in so far as he was followed by Gregory the Great — 
the last of the Western Fathers and the first mediae /al 
theologian — John of Damascus, the last of the Eastern 
Fathers, sets before us the essence of Greek theology. It 
is interesting to see where these Fathers differ. The 
mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Spirit, 
on which the two churches divided, really belongs to a 
later period, although John anticipates the Greek position. 
The following are his chief points of distinction from 
Augustine and Gregory : — His assertion of free will — a 
marked feature of Greek theology throughout in contra- 
distinction from Latin ; his silence as to original sin ; his 
distinction between foreknowledge and predestination ; his 
denial of the physical fire of hell — so prominent in the 
lurid horrors of the mediaeval inferno from Gregory to 
Dante ; and his moderate views of the sacraments, 
which he holds to be only two — Baptism and the Lord's 
Supper. 

The other important theologian of the iconoclastic 
period is Theodore of Studium, who comes in the second 
and milder time of imperial attacks on image worship as 
the champion of the pictures. He may be said to have 
pronounced the final word of orthodoxy on the subject. 
Theodore was born in the year 759 in a family of high 



212 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



social position at Constantinople. Thus he was a youth 
sixteen years old when Irene restored the worship of pic- 
tures, and the greater part of his life was spent in the 
subsequent period of image worship. Under the influence 
of his uncle Paul, who renounced the gay society of Con- 
stantinople and retired to a cave, a wave of enthusiasm 
for monasticism swept over the whole family. Theodore, 
with his father, his remaining uncles and his brothers, went 
into a monastic retreat under the direction of Paul, while 
his mother took her one little daughter to live with her 
"in cellular fashion." It would seem that the mother was 
the dominant influence in this scattering of her family, for 
when her youngest son, breaking down at the piteous 
moment of parting, clung to her neck begging her to let 
him stay with her, the determined woman answered, " If 
you do not go willingly, my child, I will drag you with 
my own hand on board ship." 

For thirteen years Theodore lived in the monastery of 
Saccudio under his uncle Paul, who ordained him to the 
priesthood and then insisted on consecrating him abbot in 
place of himself — a singular act of self-abnegation, which, 
while it does honour to the devotion and humility of the 
senior, and helps us to understand the spell he had cast on 
his family, also testifies to the high qualities that had been 
revealed in the junior. Practically they lived as joint 
abbots — for Theodore would not let his uncle retire— first 
at Saccudio and then at Studium, a monastery situated 
within the walls of Constantinople. Constantine Por- 
phyrogenitus had broken up the establishment at Saccudio 
in a rage because the monks would not give their consent 
to his second marriage. This incident, revealing the 
emperor's desire to have an endorsement of his conduct 
from the monks, followed by the refusal of the monks 
to grant it, shows how powerful the monastery was as an 
independent body. On her return to power Irene had rein- 
stated the scattered monks. But a raid of the Saracens 
afterwards made it necessary for them to retreat across 
the Bosphorus; and then it was that Theodore was 



THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 213 

appointed abbot of the great monastery of Studiuni. 
The monks in this monastery were of the order of 
Accemeti (the Sleepless), so named because they took 
turns in a continuous chanting erf the praise of God in 
their chapel that never ceased day or night all through 
the twenty - four hours the whole year round. This 
monastery was also a famous centre for the copying of 
manuscripts, and the beautiful handwriting here developed 
became famous. 

When Leo the Armenian revived the iconoclastic 
movement, Theodore appeared as the champion of the 
pictures. In defiance of the imperial commands, he 
arranged a procession of sacred icons borne aloft through the 
streets of Constantinople on Palm Sunday in the year 815. 
It is in Theodore's writings that we get the clearest under- 
standing of the case for image worship. We can understand 
the popular idolatry. But what we want to see is how 
men of intelligence, culture, and genuine religious earnest- 
ness, like John of Damascus and Theodore of Studium, 
could support what the reforming emperors were endeavour- 
ing to suppress as childish superstition and rank idolatry. 
There must have been some intellectual reason and some 
high religious motive in the strenuous opposition of these 
men to what strikes us as an enlightened and elevated 
policy. Our best answer to this question is to be found 
in the writings of Theodore — his Antirrhetica Adversus 
Iconomachos and his letters. His arguments amount in 
the main to three: (1) Theodore insists on the impiety of 
the secular government in interfering with the affairs of 
the Church. It was late in the day to raise such a point, 
at Constantinople of all places. But although people 
had tamely submitted to interference which only affected 
bishops and theologians, in appointing and deposing 
ecclesiastics, and in dictating doctrinal statements, it was 
another matter when emperors ventured to lay their finger 
on the popular worship in the churches. Besides, the 
monks had always stood for the independence of the 
Church, even when the bishops had meekly bowed to the 



214 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



yoke of the State. (2) Theodore thought he detected an 
attack on the doctrine of the incarnation. Here the dis- 
cussion enters the region of theological controversy. The 
Iconoclasts were suspected of monophysitism. They had 
come from the home of the Monophysites in Asia Minor — 
the instigator of the first attack from Isauria, the leader 
of the second from Armenia. Then the controversy was 
diverted from its original question. It was no longer 
merely supposed to be the contention of the Iconoclasts 
that the worship of images was idolatry ; they were 
charged with denying that any true picture of Christ could 
be made, because as God He had no longer a circumscribed 
bodily form. The contention of the image' worshippers, 
on the other hand, was that this line of argument destroyed 
the permanence of the incarnation. The humanity of 
Christ is lost if He is not such that He can be represented 
in a picture. (3) The dreadful charge of Manichseism 
— so often revived in heresy controversies — was raised 
against the Iconoclasts. Their aversion to a representa- 
tion of the bodily appearence of Christ was taken by 
the image worshippers as a sign of their reprobation of 
matter as evil in itself. So was their objection to kissing 
the pictures. 

We must admit that there was some ground for 
Theodore's contentions. The iconoclastic emperors may 
have had a good cause ; but they spoilt it by their tyranny. 
They did not go the way to effect a genuine reformation of 
religion. Then there was a real danger lest the incarna- 
tion itself should be lost in theories about it. A picture 
of Christ was a wholesome antidote to the abstractions of 
metaphysical theology in relation to the Second Person of 
the Trinity. Possibly, too, some truly religious influence 
was exercised by the contemplation of the pictures. They 
were thought to hfive a sacramental efl&cacy. Whatever 
may be said of the mysticism or materialism of this view, 
we must acknowledge that the aim of devout defenders of 
the popular worship was high and pure. They maintained 
that the picture of Christ brought Him near to those who 



THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP 215 

gazed on it reverently. Theodore writes in the spirit of 
St. Francis and Thomas k Kempis : " The true Christian is 
nothing but a copy or impression of Christ," ^ and he quotes 
Dionysius the Areopagite when he says, " The archetype 
appears in the image." ^ Unfortunately this line of argu- 
ment would almost justify idolatry pe7' se, when distinguished 
from fetishism. 

1 Lib. ii. Ep. 22.* • Lib. ii. Ep. 38. 



CHAPTER V 



THE PAULICIANS 

{a) George Monachias ; Photins ; " Continuator " ; Nicetas ; Anna 
Comnena ; Michael Psellus ; Euthymius, The Key of Truth ; 
Petnis Siculus ; Zonaras. 

(6) Gibbon, chap, liv., and Bury, Appendix 6 ; Pinlay, Byzantine 
Empire, Book i. cbap. iii. ; Smith's Dictionary of Chr. Biog., 
article " Pauliciani " ; F. C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth, 
1898 ; Karapet Ter-Urkrttschian, Die Paulikianer in byzan- 
tinischen haiserreichey 1893. 

The Paulicians, to whom Gibbon devotes a whole chapter 
of his history, have been the most egregiously libelled of 
all the Christian sects. The orthodox Church accused 
them of the very scandals that the pagans had imagined 
with regard to the early Christians, and with no more basis 
of fact to rest their charges upon. Even ecclesiastics who 
behaved more reasonably confounded them with the hated 
Manichseans, or at best with the heretical Marcionites. The 
simplicity of their religious faith and life, and their rejection 
of the extravagances and superstitions of the later Church, 
led to their history and tenets being dragged into theological 
controversies with which they had no immediate concern, 
and therefore, of course, to monstrous perversions of them. 
But quite recently, following minor results of research, Mr. 
Conybeare has rendered a great service to their memory by 
his publication and translation of the ancient Paulician work. 
The K§oj of Truth} together with a valuable historical and 
critical study of it. We are now able to brush away the libels 
of centuries and go to an original source for our knowledge 

^ From a MS. written a.d. 1782 and found by Mr. Conybeare in the 
archives of the Holy Synod of Edimatzin. 

216 



THE PAULICIANS 



217 



of the teachings and practices of these much maligned 
people.^ 

Beyond the Taurus mountains in the south-east of 
Armenia there hved during the eighth and ninth centuries a 
community of Christians cherishing their own discipline, 
rites, and doctrines apart from the main body of the Eastern 
Church and all its later developments. These people, who 
came to be known in the outside world as Paulicians, and 
who afterwards accepted the title for themselves, owe their 
original separateness to their geographical seclusion. There- 
fore it is quite arguable that they should be regarded as 
representing the sur\aval of a more primitive type of 
Christianity rather than as the followers of a heresy which 
sprang up nearer the time when they emerged into the 
daylight of history, and Mr. Conybeare connects them with 
the primitive Adoptionists, whose views can be traced back 
to very early times. ^ The ideas of these people are now to 
be seen in The Key of Truth, which is a book of the 
Throuraketyi, or Paulicians of Thoumki, composed about 

^ The origin of the name " Paulician " is somewhat obscure. There is no 
foundation for the notion of ninth century polemical writers, that it is to be 
traced to a Manichsean of the fourth century named Paul, since the Paulicians 
were certainly not of Manichsean origin. The writer in Smith's Dictionary of 
Christian Biography regards it as a reference to the Apostle Paul. Like 
the Marcionites, the Paulicians made much of St. Paul's Epistles, and 
Photius says that they themselves derived their name from the apostle 
(Photius, ii. 11 ; iii. 10 ; vi. 4). Mr. Conybeare derives it from Paul of 
Samosata, quoting the Armenian writer Gregory Magistros, who says, "Here 
then you see the Paulicians who got their poison from Paul of Samosata " 
{Key of Truth, p. cv.). In the 19th Canon of Nicsea the followers of Paul of 
Samosata are called Pauliani ; Pauliciani is the Armenian form of this 
name, the " ic " or " ik " being a diminutive introduced in contempt. They 
did not at first call themselves by the title, but simply designated themselves 
** Christians." It may have been flung at them by opponents to connect 
them with the heretic Paul, and subsequently interpreted by them in a new 
meaning to refer to the apostle and so throw off the libel. 

2 Adoptionism is found in the Shepherd of Hermas and other early Church 
wi'itings, perhaps also in the New Testament, in the discourses of St. Peter 
[e.g. Acts V. 31), which represent the primitive Christology, preceding (1) the 
miraculous birth idea expressed in tlie infancy narratives of the first and 
third Gospels, especially in Luke i. 35, and (2) the still more developed con- 
ception of the pre-existent Son of God becoming incarnate, in St. Paul and 
St. John(g,g'. Gal. iv. 4 ; John i. 14). 



218 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

the year 800. This book reveals a simple Church order 
with no hierarchy. There is only one grade of the ministry 
consisting of the " elect," and the ministers are called 
indifferently by the various titles of apostle, priest, bishop, 
elder. Admission to the Church is by baptism, which 
must be sought voluntarily. Infant baptism is repudiated. 
There is no idea of original sin ; therefore infants do not 
need baptism. The proper time for baptism is the age of 
thirty. After his baptism, which should be in a river, the 
Holy Spirit enters the immersed person. There are three 
sacraments — repentance, baptism, the body and the blood. 
The latter, the Eucharist, is taken at night, and not separated 
from the Agape, which is still preserved. Mariolatry and 
the intercession of saints are rejected ; image worship, the 
use of crosses, relics, incense, candles, and resorting to sacred 
springs are all repudiated as idolatrous practices. The idea 
of purgatory is rejected. The holy year begins with the 
feast of John the Baptist. January 6 th is observed as the 
festival of the baptism and spiritual rebirth of Jesus. 
Zatihj or Easter, is kept on the 14th Nisan. We meet 
with no special Sunday observances, and possibly the 
Saturday Sabbath was maintained. There is no feast of 
Christmas or of the Annunciation. 

When we come to consider the question of doctrine, we 
note that the word " Trinity " never appears in the book. 
Yet it is to be observed that the rite of baptism consists of 
one immersion followed by the throwing of three handfuls 
of water over the candidate. The system is not Marcionite, 
for it has no traces of Docetism. On the contrary, it is 
Adoptionist. The Paulicians have been accused of rejecting 
the Old Testament. But The Key of Truth shows that this 
was not actually the case. It contains quotations from the 
Old Testament, though these are but few, and its chief 
authority is the New Testament, the whole of which it aoeepts. 
The Paulicians have also been accused of the Manichseism of 
holding that the world was created by Satan. This is a libel, 
perhaps to be attributed to their denial that Christ created it. 

We can well understand why people holding such 



THE PAULICIANS 



219 



views and carrying on such practices as are here described 
were persecuted by the Greek Church. In many respects 
their position resembles that of the iconoclastic emperors, 
some of whom came from the neighbourhood of the 
Paulicians and may have been influenced by them. Ancient 
Oriental Baptists, these people were in many respects 
Protestants before Protestantism. They held to a simple 
spiritual conception of Christianity, to a democratic Church 
order, and to an unorthodox view of the nature of Christ. 
A dogmatic, hierarchical, ritualistic, superstitious Church 
could not possibly tolerate them. Their fiercest enemies were 
the monks, of whom they had no good opinion. They said that 
the devil's favourite disguise was the appearance of a monk. 

The first leader of the Paulicians known to us, 
commonly regarded as their founder, was Constantine, who 
came from the village of Mananalis, not far from the 
cataract of the Euphrates mentioned by Pliny. Like so 
many other great leaders of religion he received his first 
impulse from Scripture. A deacon coming home from Syria, 
where he had been held captive by the Saracens, was 
hospitably entertained by Constantine, in return for which 
kindness he gave his host two volumes, one contaraing the 
Gospels and the other St. Paul's Epistles. Constantine 
eagerly devoured them, and they lit in him the fire of 
missionary enthusiasm. Especially interested in St. Paul, 
he adopted the name of the apostle's companion Silvanus, 
started on a tour of preaching about the year 657, and 
continued his work for some twenty-seven years. Going 
up the course of the Euphrates, he crossed the great barrier 
of the Taurus and carried his gospel into more western 
regions of Asia Minor. He had now left the tolerant rule 
of the caliphate, which in so far as it gave liberty to the 
Christians did not trouble itself to distinguish between the 
sects, regarding orthodoxy and heresy with equal contempt, 
and he had come within the bounds both of the empire and 
of the Church. There his success in founding churches of 
his own persuasion, which he named after St. Paul's 
churches, was so great that the Emperor Constantine 



220 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

Pogonatus had his attention directed to it, with the result 
that he sent an imperial officer named Simeon to the spot 
to suppress the movement. Constantine Silvanus and 
many of his followers were arrested. They refused to 
recant, and their faithful testimony was so striking that it 
won over Simeon to their side, and he was to be seen later 
going about as a teacher in the mission under the Pauline 
name of Silas. Meanwhile Silvanus had been stoned to 
death, and in the year 690 Simeon and several others 
among the Paulicians were killed by order of the cruel 
Emperor Justinian ii. 

During the next century divisions broke out among 
the Paulicians. For a time Paul the Armenian — to whose 
name some trace the title of the sect — was its leader, and 
on his death each of his sons, Gegnoesius and Theodore, 
claimed the succession. Gegnoesius, who was the elder, 
based his claim on appointment by his father. The doctrine 
of apostolical succession was now creeping into this church, 
which had stood at first for spirituality and democratic 
simplicity. But Theodore claimed to receive his grace, as 
his father had received grace, direct from God. The 
unseemly disputes that now arose again called the govern- 
ment's attention to the Paulicians, and in the year 722 
Gegnoesius was summoned to Constantinople and brought 
before Leo the Isaurian. It was well for him and his 
followers that the emperor was the great protestant 
Iconoclast. Had he been a bigoted champion of orthodoxy 
it would have gone ill with the Paulicians ; but there was 
much in common between these people and the iconoclastic 
emperors,^ and Leo listened to Gegnoesius very tolerantly 
and could see no harm in his doctrines, nor could the aged 
patriarch Germanus detect any lurking error in them. 
The result was that the accused teacher was sent back home 
with imperial letters for the protection of the Paulicians. 
Throughout the reigns of the iconoclastic emperors they 
generally enjoyed imperial favour and were seldom molested. 
After a period of depression owing to divisions and 
* Mr. Conybeare regards the iconoclastic emperors as virtually Paulicians. 



THE PAULIOIANS 



221 



unworthy leadership during the latter part of the eighth 
century, the Paulicians revived at the beginning of the 
ninth century under the leadership of the good and gifted 
Sergius. Like Silvanus, this man was led to a new way 
of life under the influence of the Gospels and the Epistles 
of Paul, to which he had been referred by a woman member 
of the sect. He now objected to the orthodox Church on 
account of its withdrawal of the Scriptures from the 
attention of the people. As we read this story of Sergius 
we seem to be anticipating the history of the Eeformation, 
which took the same lines in regard to the Bible. 

Sergius followed the curious example of earlier leaders 
of the sect and took a Pauline name, Tychicus, when he 
entered on a similar missionary career. He carried on his 
labours for thirty-four years, visiting almost every part of 
the central plateaus of Asia Minor. In one of his letters 
he wrote, " I have run from east to west, and from north 
to south, till my knees were weary, preaching the gospel 
of Christ."^ Meanwhile, like his great predecessor 
St. Paul, he maintained himself by working with his own 
hands, his trade being that of a carpenter. This really 
promised to be a great religious revival. If the iconoclastic 
party of the government had joined heartily with the 
spiritual movement among the Paulicians we might have 
seen a reformation in the East anticipating the Eeformation 
in the West by many centuries. But there was one fatal 
hindrance to this grand consummation. The methods of 
force pursued by the imperial government were not such 
as could effect a real reform of religion. The contamination 
of unscrupulous politics vitiated the hope of effective 
improvements and even led to a reversal of policy. Leo 
the Armenian, although an Iconoclast, endeavoured to 
strengthen his position by pleasing the Church party in 
permitting an attack on the Paulicians. It was a wicked 
course of action, and fatal to any statesmanlike improve- 
ment of the situation. So terrible was the persecution 
which now broke out, that some of the Paulicians murdered 

» Photius, i. 22. 



222 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

their judges and then fled out of the empire and took refuge 
with the Saracens. 

Under Michael ii. the sect again enjoyed peace, and 
the influence of Sergius grew and spread. Photius ascribes 
to him terms of strange elation in saying, " I am the porter 
and the good shepherd and the leader of the body of 
Christ and the light of the house of God. I, too, am with 
you always, even unto the end of the world." ^ But we 
must be always on our guard against the reports of an 
enemy, especially when he is also an ecclesiastic. 

When the iconoclastic regime was broken, and the 
orthodox party came back into power under the Empress 
Theodora (A.D. 842), there was no hope of a just treatment 
of heretics. Imperial commissioners were now sent into 
the suspected districts, and those who refused to submit to 
the Church were condemned to death by hanging, crucifixion, 
beheading, drowning. The deaths have been reckoned at 
from 10, 000 to 100, 000. Again the Paulicians were goaded 
to measures of retaliation. An officer in the imperial army 
of the East, named Carbeas, raised a rebellion, and was 
joined by 5,000 of the troops.^ He had the best excuse 
for his action, if civil war is ever permissible, for he had 
learned that his father had been impaled by the orthodox 
officials. This barbarous method of execution, which has 
been frequently practised by the Turks in their recent 
massacres of Christians, was here adopted by men who 
pretended to be Christians themselves and who professed 
to be acting in the interest of a holy Church and in 
defence of its creed. The maddened insurgents crossed 
the border of the empire, and with the permission of the 
caliph fortified the city of Thephrike,^ which became their 
headquarters. Thence they issued in raiding parties, with 
the co-operation of Omar the Emir of Melitene, and 
repeatedly ravaged the frontier of the empire. Petronas, 
the brother of Theodora, who was entrusted with tbe 
command of the imperial army, could not do more than 
stand on the defensive. At length Theodora's son, Michael 

1 Photius, i. 21. ' Continuator, 103. ^ Now Divigri. 



THE PAULICIANS 



223 



the Drunkard, led an army in person against the combined 
Saracens and Paulicians. He was defeated at Samosata 
and compelled to flee for his life. More than a hundred 
tribunes were taken prisoners, and those who could not 
ransom themselves were put to torture. Carbeas was 
succeeded in the leadership of these fierce, fighting Paulicians 
by Chrysocheir, who, still in alliance with the Saracens, 
carried the war into the heart of Asia Minor, as far as 
the western coast and almost up to Constantinople itself, 
pillaging Ancyra and Ephesus, Nicsea and Nicomedia. At 
Ephesus the invaders stabled their horses in the cathedral, 
and showed the utmost contempt for the pictures and 
relics, of which they regarded it as the idol temple. The 
Emperor Basil i. was compelled to sue for peace and to 
offer a heavy bribe to buy them off. But Chrysocheir 
scornfully refused his terms and would be satisfied with 
nothing less than the emperor's retirement to the West 
and surrender of the whole of the Eastern Empire. Basil 
had no alternative but to fight. He collected all the 
available forces of the empire and precipitated them on 
the rebels.^ Chrysocheir was taken by surprise and killed 
while in retreat. Thephrike was deserted by the insurgents, 
entered by the imperial troops, and laid waste (a.d. 871). 
It was a complete and final victory for Basil, and it 
put an end to any further danger of serious invasion. 
But many of the rebels had escaped to the mountains. 
There they continued their independence in alliance with 
the Saracens, and from time to time joined in border raids. 

Meanwhile there was another body of Paulicians in 
Thrace, the descendants and converts of some whom 
Constantine Copronicus had transported to this part of 
Europe. These people conformed outwardly with the 
orthodox Church, and did not attempt any revolt on their 
own accoimt ; but they were credited with sending aid to 
their more warlike brethren, to whom they stood in the 

* It is a mistake of the Continuator to suppose that Basil crossed the Eu- 
phrates. Failing to take Tephrice, his aim was Melitene, the Saracen strong- 
hold west of the Euphrates. See Anderson in Class. Jiev., April 1896, p. 139. 



224 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

relation of Covenanters to Cameronians, or that of Corsican 
villagers to the banditti. They assiduously propagated their 
protestant teaching throughout Thrace ; they also sent to 
Bulgaria missionaries, who were very successful in winning 
over many of the recent converts of the Greek missionaries. 
The Paulicians in Thrace were allowed a measure of home 
rule in return for their services in defence of the empire. 
They held the city of Philippopolis and occupied a line of 
villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus, and the 
orthodox inhabitants were dominated by them. During 
the Norman war in the reign of Alexius Comnenus, 2,500 
of them deserted. But they were afterwards subdued and 
punished. Alexius wintered at Philippopolis and devoted 
himself to arguing with them.^ So successful was he — 
according to his daughter — that she styled him " the 
Thirteenth Apostle." Philippopolis was beautified with 
gardens for the benefit of those who had succumbed to the 
arguments of the imperial controversialist ; but while they 
were permitted to remain there, they had lost all power. 
We must not make too much of the admiring princess' 
testimony in this matter. Undoubtedly there were many 
stubborn heretics who could not be persuaded even by an 
emperor's apostolic eloquence, and probably these people 
joined the new sects that were now springing up. 

One of these sects consisted of the later Euchites, 
who have been associated with the Paulicians as con- 
tinuators of the hated heresy. They were scattered over 
the same districts of Thrace in which the Paulicians had been 
planted. All that we know of them is dependent on a 
treatise written by an opponent,^ who was probably the 
very man whom the Byzantine government had sent to 
Thrace to suppress them. We cannot therefore expect an 
unbiased opinion from such a source. The Euchites were 

* Anna Comnena, Alexias, xv. 9. 

2 AidXoyos irepl ivepyelas SaL/xdviov, by Michael Psellus. He was a teacher 
of philosophy at Constantinople, of wide knowledge on a variety of subjects. 
His book is a storehouse of information concerning contemporary information. 
He died a.d. 1105. 



THE PAULICIANS 



225 



charged with the curious dualism of believing in two sons 
of God. Satanael the elder corresponds to the Gnostic 
demiurge, while the younger is Christ to whom heavenly 
things are assigned. The sect was said to worship both 
sons, as springing from the same Father. If so, these 
Euchites could not be Manichaean, and their dualism must 
be different from the Persian. But some were reported only 
to reverence the younger son, since he had chosen the better 
part, the heavenly — still without saying anything ill of the 
senior ; while others were said to honour the elder as the 
first-born and creator of the world, and even to ascribe 
envy to the younger son, on account of which he sends 
earthquakes, hail, pestilence. But this is confusing and 
uncertain. What seems clear is that the Euchites were an 
ecstatic sect who attributed great value to long, exciting 
prayers. We first hear the name as early as the fourth 
century ; and traces of them in Mesopotamia, Syria, and 
Asia Minor are to be met with again and again during the 
intermediate ages. There is therefore reason to suppose 
that they lingered on to the time of the activity of the 
Paulicians, under whose influence they were quickened into 
renewed earnestness. If it is true that they held every man 
to be inhabited by a demon from his birth, they would seem 
to have accepted a very extravagant doctrine of original sin, 
which would be in sharp conflict with the belief of the Paul- 
icians, who denied anything of the kind. But demonology 
was now rampant in Christendom, and people would not look 
too nicely at the question of consistency in accepting it. 
Still, if the Euchites held this view, they must not be 
identified with the Paulicians, who show no trace of it. 

Another body commonly associated with the Paulicians, 
especially in Bulgaria, was that of the Bogomiles, or " Friends 
of God." I The fullest account of their tenets is given by 
Euthymius,^ according to whom they rejected the Mosaic 

* QebcfiCkoL. 

* Panoplia, Tit. 23, Narratio de Bogomilis. The Princess Anna Comnena 
will not describe their tenets lest she should yollute her lips. She writes : 
iva /XT] TT]v y\u)TTap /xoXi/uu t7]v e/xavTTjs {Alexias, XT. 9 ; vol. ii. p. 357). 

IS 



226 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

writings and the God of the Pentateuch, and regarded 
the men who are there said to be well-pleasing to Him as 
inspired by Satan. Thus they invite comparison with the 
ancient Cainites, But a curious peculiarity in the views 
of the Old Testament attributed to them by Euthymius is 
that they reckoned the Psalms and the Prophets among 
the Christian Scriptures. The Pentateuch is not concerned 
with the supreme God. It only narrates the doings of His 
elder son Satanael, who was originally seated at the right 
hand of his Father, but was cast out of heaven for plotting 
a revolt, together with the angels he had corrupted. The 
creation of the world, including mankind, is his work, except 
that in order to have men endowed with souls he is com- 
*pelled to call in the aid of his Father. This he does with 
the promise that the newly created race shall take the 
place in the service of the Supreme that has been vacated 
by the fallen angels. But he cheats his Father by seducing 
Eve in the form of a serpent, and from her begetting Cain 
and his twin-sister Calomena. Then Adam begets Abel from 
Eve. Thus Satanael is the father of Cain, and Adam the 
father of Abel, while they both have the same mother, 
Eve. When the supreme Father discovers the fraud he 
deprives Satanael of divinity. But this strange being 
continues to exert great influence over mankind, and through 
Moses produces the law which brings many evils on 
our race. In order to counteract these evils the Father 
sends forth the Logos, who is like Michael, the angel <)f 
great counsel, and who enters the Virgin Mary, appears 
with a phantom human body, teaches the gospel, over- 
comes Satanael — afterwards called Satan — ascends to 
Satanael's place at the right hand of the Father, and 
finally sinks into the bosom of the Father, from which He 
originally came. 

Unlike the Paulinists, the Bogomiles rejected water 
baptism, and allowed only the baptism of Christ as a 
spmtual baptism, called " exhortation." ^ This was con- 
ferred by a rite which consisted in laying the Gospel 

^ TrapdK\r)<Tis. 



THE PAULICIANS 



227 



according to St. John on the head of the candidate, 
invoking the Holy Spirit, and chanting the Lord's Prayer. 
Like the Euchites, they attached great value to prayer, 
which they regarded as the essence of religion in opposi- 
tion to the Catholic view of the sacrifice of the mass. 
Here they were Protestant of the Protestants. For as 
with baptism, so with the Lord's Supper, they repudiated 
the material elements in the sacrament, and in this respect 
anticipated the Quakers. 

Too much must not be made of these statements in 
detail. We possess no service book of the Bogomiles, and 
we have to view them through the coloured glasses of 
prejudiced antagonism. Still, much of what is attributed 
to them reads like a revival, or perhaps even a survival, 
of second century Ophite Gnosticism ; and the very antiquity 
of these notions makes it likely that they were really held 
by the Bogomiles more or less as described. We can 
hardly suppose that such old-world fancies would be raked up 
out of the rubbish heap of a past nearly one thousand years 
old in order to be gratuitously attributed to them. There- 
fore it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the Bogomiles 
must have adopted some system of dualism. On the 
other hand, there are Armenian scholars who have recently 
studied the subject, and come to the conclusion that 
they are not Marcionite. Now we saw that The Key 
of Truth makes it quite certain that the Paulicians were 
not Marcionite. Yet both have been so regarded in the 
past. In the Greek historians they are both called 
Manichaeans. That is Anna Comnena's title for all these 
bodies of heretics — a convenient title because odious. Since 
we now know that the Paulicians were grossly libelled, 
we may suspect that the Bogomiles were also more or 
less seriously mahgned. Their dualism was probably less 
pronounced than has been supposed. Yet, inasmuch as 
we cannot deny to them something of the kind, we should 
scarcely class them with the Paulicians. A prominent 
Paulinist, a physician named Basilius, has been commonly 
regarded as the leader of the Bogomiles of his day ; but 



228 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



that is an error.^ This man was closely examined by the 
Emperor Alexius at Constantinople, and proving true to 
his faith burnt at the hippodrome. The Princess Anna 
spreads her description over several pages in dilating on 
the scene — how the fire was constructed of the biggest 
trees, and how in every respect this was a magnificent 
triumph for her father over the horrible heresy. Her 
filial enthusiasm would be quite touching if it were not 
so tigerish.2 

In the year 1140 there was a great stir at the 
discovery of supposed Bogomile errors in the writings of 
Constantino Chrysomalus soon after his death, and they 
were condemned at a synod held under the patriarch Leo 
Stypiota in Constantinople. According to these writings 
Church baptism is inefficacious, and nothing done by uncon- 
verted though baptised persons is of any value. God's grace 
is received at the laying on of hands, but only in accordance 
with the measure of faith. Three years later two Cappa- 
docian bishops were deposed at another Constantinople synod 
as Bogomiles.^ As late as the year 1230 the patriarch 
Gennadius complained of Bogomiles stealing secretly into 
houses and leading the pious astray. The Albigenses in 
the West — so cruelly slaughtered in the crusade of Simon 
de Montford — appear to be more or less closely related to 
these heretics. Probably they suffered from the same 
libels. These people may have held theoretical errors. 
But their real offence was opposition to the sacramental 
materialism of the Church. 

^ See Bury's Gibbon, cliap. liv.. Appendix 6. 

2 Anna Comnena, Alexias, xv. 9. ' Mansi, xxi. 583. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE GREAT SCHISM 

(a) Hergenrotlier, PhotiuSy 3 vols., 1867 j Ratramnus, Contra 
GrcBcorum Opjjosita ; Anselm, De Proc. Spirit. S. ; Mansi, xv. 
and xvi. 

(&) Gibbon, chap. Ix. ; Neale, History of the Holy Eastern Church, 
Introd., vol. ii., 1850; Tondini, The Pope of Borne and the 
Popes of the Oriental Church, 1871 ; Swete, Hist, of Doctrine 
of Procession of the Holy Spirit, etc., 1876 ; Howard, The 
Schism between the Oriental and the Western Churches, 1892 ; 
Brehier, Le Schisme Oriental du XT^ Siecle^ 1899. 

The most momentous fact in the history of Christendom 
during the Middle Ages is the separation between the 
Eastern and the Western Churches. When we look at 
the two great communions, each of which claims to be the 
one genuine Church, we see them to have so much in 
common that we may wonder at the absolutely irreconcil- 
able attitude they maintain towards each other. In 
discipline, ritual, and doctrine they are much nearer to- 
gether than Eoman Catholics and Protestants, nearer even 
than High Anglicans and Evangehcal Churchmen. Both 
are episcopal, sacerdotal, sacramental, orthodox in relation 
to the historic creeds. The note of the Eastern Church is 
said to be orthodoxy and that of the Western catholicity, 
so that the one is called " The Holy Orthodox Church," 
and the other "The Catholic Church." To some extent 
these differences of title are indicative of distinctions in the 
essential characters of the bodies they represent. The one 
is especially concerned with the defence of the creed, the 
other with the maintenance of organic unity. And yet 

229 



230 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the Western Church stands for orthodoxy in its proud 
claim to infallibility, and the Eastern is equally intolerant 
of heresy, schism, or insubordination. The division fol- 
lowed centuries of close mutual communication, and it was 
so gradual that much of the common thought and life of 
the patristic trunk from which they spring is to be found 
in each of these great branches. As we contemplate them 
in their stubborn separation we may be reminded of 
Coleridge's famous metaphor in Christobel — 

" They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder, 
A dreary sea now flows between." 

In tracing the causes of this tremendous cleavage of 
Christendom we may be surprised to see how insignificant 
and unimportant some of them were. A personal quarrel 
between two patriarchs, a slight step of advance in the 
implied claims of a title, and last of all, a subtle point in 
the definition of the Trinity — these are among the influences 
that in course of time by their cumulative effect scooped 
out the great chasm, like the water brooks that running for 
past ages have at length separated whole mountains. 
Nevertheless, we must not set down the final result to a 
mere chapter of accidents. The occurrence of various 
incidents — each in itself apparently so unimportant — in a 
series coming down several centuries points to the exist- 
ence of persistent causes lurking beneath. Deep lying, 
slow moving, gigantic forces, operating through centuries, 
worked with the inevitability of fate. 

1. First among these causes we must place the racial. 
It is true that the Grreek and Latin races were near akin, 
members of the common Aryan stock which has peopled 
India, Persia, and Europe. But historically, in the period 
with which we are concerned, neither of these races was 
self - contained or unmixed with alien elements. The 
Latins were invigorated and transformed by an infusion 
of German blood resulting from successive Gothic invasions. 
The Greeks, on the other hand, were mingled with a host of 



THE GREAT SCHISM 



231 



Northern and Oriental races, especially the Sclavs and the 
Armenians and other peoples of Western Asia. Probably 
the Greeks were now a minority of the population of Greece, 
being outnumbered by the Sclavs. Constantinople ceased to 
be a Greek city except in language and culture. Her citizen- 
ship became more Oriental than Greek, and especially 
Armenian. The strongest rulers of this late Eoman Em- 
pire which we call Byzantine were natives of Asia Minor. 
Thus the natural sympathies and affinities of the two 
branches of the Church tended century by century to 
mutual estrangement. 

We saw how at the beginning the freer Christianity, 
the Pauline, that which was emancipated from Judaism, 
was Grecian.^ First and second century literature in Eome 
was composed in the Greek language. The churches of 
Lyons and Gaul were offshoots from the Greek colony at 
Marseilles, and their famous bishop Irenseus was a native 
of Greek-speaking Smyrna, who wrote his work Against 
Heretics in Greek. Latin Christian literature first appeared 
in north Africa a few years later. The great heresies of 
the Church nearly all sprang from the Eastern branch of 
the Church, and though at first they flowed to Eome and 
other Western places, by the middle of the fourth century 
they were successfully beaten back by the established 
hierarchial system of the West. The West had its schisms 
on questions of discipHne — first the Novatian, then the 
Donatist, and its one great heresy, Pelagianism, which was 
concerned with the human side of religion. The East elabor- 
ated the orthodoxy of the Church. The Apostles' Creed 
grew up in the West, but as a schedule for catechetical 
teaching, probably originating in earlier Eastern schedules ; 
the West, too — apparently in the monastery at Lerins — 
gave birth to the Athanasian Creed ; but that is rather a 
hymn to be set by the side of the other great Latin psalm 
of praise, the Te Deum, not properly a Church creed at all. 
The one test creed is the Nicene, and this is Eastern. Its 
greatest exponents were in the East. During the fourth 

1 See pp. 3-5. 



232 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



century and after, in spite of the strength of Ambrose, and 
the massive genius of Augustine, the intellectual centre of 
gravity of the Church was in the East. Eome accepted 
the elaboration of the doctrine of the Trinity from the East. 
It is true that by a flash of inspired political wisdom she 
stepped in at the critical moment and said the word that 
settled the orthodoxy of the whole Church for all subsequent 
ages ; for Leo's Tome determined the decision of Chalcedon. 
But it was the thought which the great pope had received 
from the East that he was able to enshrine in that immortal 
document. After this, the West, absorbed in its own 
practical problems, came to view with weary indifference 
the hair-splitting controversies of the Eastern Church. She 
was concerned for orthodoxy, and again and again she struck 
in with a word of authority to save the situation. But as 
first the Nestorians by the Euphrates, and then the Mono- 
physites in Egypt and Syria, were cut off, Eome came to 
have less and less vital connection with what was now 
essentially the Byzantine Church, identical in area with the 
Byzantine Empire. 

2. A second influence that worked gradually but with 
inevitable consequences towards this cleavage of the Church 
was the separation of the Eastern and Western Empires, 
followed by the slow dissolution of the latter, and then its 
marvellous resurrection as an independent power, no longer 
a Eoman Empire at all except in name. This process began 
when the emperors ceased to treat Eome as the centre of 
government. Diocletian thoroughly Orientalised the ad- 
ministration with its headquarters at Nicomedia. But the 
most significant fact in this connection was the founding of 
Constantinople. When Constantine transferred the centre 
of social influence and intellectual life, as well as the centre 
of government, from the banks of the Tiber to the shores of 
the Bosphorus, he began to make a fissure which nothing 
could stop. Subsequently this severance was widened by 
the Gothic invasions — the establishment of a Gothic king- 
dom, only nominally subject to the emperor in the East as 
its suzerain lord — the failure of the exarch at Eavenna to 



THE GREAT SCHISM 



233 



shelter Italy from the awful scourge of the Huns — and the 
success first of Leo, then of Gregory, in stepping into the 
breach and saving civilisation and the Church, when their 
professed protector at Constantinople had proved to be an 
impotent defence. Meanwhile in the East the Church 
was becoming more and more identified with the empire. 
There she was tied hands and feet by the imperial will. 
Emperors and empresses appointed and deposed patriarchs 
and bishops. The Byzantine Church was being converted 
into a department of the highly organised bureaucratic Byzan- 
tine Empire. Naturally the West asked, Why should the 
free Latin Church tie itself down to the servile ways of the 
subject Greek Church ? If the emperor could not protect 
the Church in the West there was no reason why she should 
not be independent of his servants in the East. When the 
pope crowned Charles the Great as emperor at Eome on 
Christmas Day, a.d. 800, he definitely broke with the emperor 
at Constantinople, in whose eyes the Frank was a usurper. 
Again the marvellous political insight of Eome proved 
to be correct. It was useless to look across the Adriatic 
for protection against the Lombards ; then the wise course 
was to find safety in the rising power across the Alps. But 
the price for the new alliance had to be paid. Henceforth 
the papacy, with all its dreams of a universal Church, must 
content itself in fact with being the dominant influence 
only in Western churches, and see the other half of 
Christendom drift wholly out of its sphere of authority. 

3. A third influence tending to the severance of the 
two churches is to be detected in the rivalry between the 
patriarchates of Eome and Constantinople, and especially in 
the lofty claims put forth by the papacy. We saw how 
gravely Gregory the Great had expostulated with John the 
Faster, when that patriarch had laid claim to the title of 
" (Ecumenical Bishop." Long before this, though not 
urging precisely the same titular claim, the popes had made 
great demands on the ground of their succession to the 
chair of Peter. The council of Sardica (a.d. 344) bad 

1 See p. 140. 



234 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



given a right of appeal on the part of a bishop who had 
been deposed by his fellow-bishops to Julius the bishop of 
Eome. But it is a matter of dispute whether this was 
intended to refer only to this particular pope or also to his 
successors, and further how far he might take the initiative. 
It is to be observed that in this council the Eastern as 
well as the Western Church was represented ; there were 
bishops from Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Thessaly, and other 
Oriental districts. But since the Eusebian bishops had with- 
drawn and Hosius of Cordova was presiding, it is possible 
that there was a majority of Western bishops when the 
canon was voted. Then Leo the Great (a.d. 440-461) 
put forth high papal claims, referring to Peter and his 
successors as constituting the rock on which the Church is 
founded.^ Peter is the pastor and prince of the whole 
Church. To resist his authority is an act of impious pride 
and the sure way to hell. Considering the many times in 
which the popes make great demands in various ways, it is 
difficult to think Gregory the Great wholly disinterested 
when he rebukes his brother at Constantinople for arrogance 
in calling himself the " CEcumenical Bishop." Gregory 
claims some merit for not adopting the title for himself on 
the ground that it has been allowed to earlier popes ; but 
here he is not accurate, for the previous use of the term 
has been generic, applying to all the patriarchs,^ whereas 
now the question turns on the exclusive use of it for one 
patriarch in particular. 

The conflict between pope and patriarch reached an 
acute condition in the ninth century. Ignatius, the 
patriarch of Constantinople, had dared to rebuke the im- 
morality of the Csesar Bardas, refusing to administer the 
sacrament to him on Advent Sunday, A.D. 857. No 
ecclesiastic in the Eastern Church could follow with im- 
punity the bold example of Ambrose in the West, when 
he stood at his church door and refused admission to 
the Emperor Theodosius. Ignatius was arrested and im- 

^ e^g. Letters, cv., cxx. 

* See Dudden, Gregory the Great, vol. ii. pp. 209 ff. 



THE GREAT SCHISM 



235 



prisoned on a false accusation of sedition, and in his place 
the emperor nominated and a synod formally elected a very 
remarkable man to the headship of the Byzantine Church. 
This was Photius, who has been greatly maligned by the 
papal party, but who appears to have been really of high 
personal character, though haughty and ambitious. Eminent 
for learning in a church that has prided itself on its 
scholarship, Photius mentions no less than 280 pagan and 
Christian authors whose works he has read. He comes 
only second to John of Damascus among the leading church- 
men of the later Byzantine period. If John was the last 
of the Fathers, Photius may be considered the last of the 
scholarly leaders of first rank in the Greek Church. His 
controversial writings reveal intellectual contempt spring- 
ing from superior knowledge and culture, which he does 
not scruple to express in dealing with the pretensions of 
his western rival, the pope, a man his inferior both in 
learning and in brain power. Here we see the age-long 
scorn of the finished Greek for the ruder Latin civilisation. 

Photius was a layman when he was suddenly called to 
his lofty post in the Church. But he was a man of noble 
birth and rank, and he then held the office of chief 
Secretary of State. He was rushed through the minor 
orders with a haste that scandalised the proprieties, taking 
one step a day, till he was promoted to the highest place of 
all. Ambrose was a layman when he was elected bishop 
of Milan by acclamation, and though he took some time for 
preparation and his promotion was not quite so rapid as 
that of Photius, it was somewhat similar. In both cases, 
proved ability in the administration of civil affairs was 
taken as a qualification for the regulation of Church 
government. But there was one vital difference between 
the two cases. Ambrose had been elected by the people of 
Milan in a popular assembly ; but Photius was forced on 
the people of Constantinople by the government. 

These high-handed proceedings met with serious opposi- 
tion, and in order to settle the matter the Emperor 
Michael invited the pope, Nicholas i., to send delegates to a 



236 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



general council. This was done, and the council was held 
at Constantinople in the year 861. It deposed Ignatius, 
although he had the support of the people, and its decision 
was ratified by the papal delegates. Then the friends of 
Ignatius, that is to say, the real representatives of the Greek 
Church, appealed to the pope, who threw over his delegates, 
and convoked a synod at Kome, which decided in favour of 
Ignatius, and pronounced excommunication on Photius in 
case he should dare to retain the patriarchate (a.d. 863). 
Photius replied by insisting on the equality in rank of the 
patriarchs of Kome and Constantinople. The emperor sum- 
moned another council at Constantinople four years later, at 
which the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem 
were represented ; and this council pronounced a sentence 
of deposition on the Eoman pontiff. But Photius was in a 
precarious position, only able to hold on by the support of 
his patron Michael ; and when that was removed by the 
murder of the emperor, he was seized and imprisoned in a 
convent, and Ignatius restored to the patriarchate. In the 
year 869 a council was held in St. Sophia, which the 
Latins reckon as the " Eighth CEcumenical Council." It 
condemned Photius and confirmed the right of Ignatius to 
be patriarch of Constantinople. 

This miserable quarrel ended happily. The rival 
patriarchs were both really good men, and ultimately they 
were reconciled. Even Ignatius, who had owed so much 
to the papacy, could not endure the arrogant interference of 
Pope John viii. with the missionary work which the Greek 
Church was carrying on in Bulgaria with remarkable 
success ; and the pope had threatened to excommunicate 
him too, when death removed him from his difficulties 
(Oct. 23, 877). Three days later Photius was quietly 
restored to the patriarchate. It was not to be expected 
that the pope would find him more complacent. In the 
year 879, a council, three times as large as Ignatius's council, 
met with much pomp in St. Sophia, pronounced the 
previous council a fraud, re-affirmed the Nicene Creed 
without the Filioque clause on which the Latins were in- 



THE GREAT SCHISM 



237 



sisting, and ended by eulogising the virtues and learning 
of Photius. This council is sometimes reckoned by the 
Orientals as the " Eighth (Ecumenical Council," though 
generally only seven general councils are allowed in the 
East. Thus if an eighth is to be counted at all — and that 
is the case definitely in the Eoman Church, though less 
decisively in the Greek — it is taken differently in the 
West and in the East. With the Latins it is Ignatius's 
council of A.D. 869; with the Greeks it is Photius's council 
of A.D. 879. The papal delegates assented to the decision 
of the latter council, and deceived the pope on their return 
to Eome by representing that it had conceded his Bulgarian 
claims. When he learnt the truth and discovered that it 
had done nothing of the kind, he pronounced an anathema 
on Photius for deceiving and degrading the Holy See. But 
it does not appear that the patriarch had had any share in 
the diplomacy which the papal legates had practised. 
Photius ended his days in learned leisure at a monastery, 
and died in the year 891. The feud between the two 
churches now went on and it only ended with final and 
complete severance. 

4. The last stage of the long quarrel was concerned 
with the controversy on the Filioque clause of the Nicene 
Creed. The irony of history is nowhere more apparent 
than in the fact that the chief difference between the two 
great historic churches is so fine a point of doctrine 
that ordinary people could never guess its supposed im- 
portance. Nobody could pretend to decide it without 
penetrating into the profound mystery of the Being of God. 
Both churches accept the Nicene Creed as confirmed in the 
great Church councils; both are loyal to the idea of the 
homousion, and to the full Divinity of the Holy Spirit as 
well as that of the Son ; both are thoroughly Trinitarian. 
But while the Eastern Church maintains that the Holy 
Spirit proceeds from the Father alone though through the 
Son, the Western Church contends that He proceeds from 
the Father and also from the Son as a joint source. Not 
only does the Greek Church object to the latter idea, it 



238 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



accuses the Latin Church of a wrong action in venturing to 
insert a word in the venerated Nicene Creed. The clause 
in the Latin version asserting the procession of the Holy 
Spirit originally ran : " Qui ex patre proceditr The Eoman 
Church now renders this clause : " Qui ex Patre Filioque 
fvoceditr The insertion of Filioque at this point in the 
creed became the chief ground of division between the two 
churches, and it has remained so down to the present 
day without any hope of reconciliation, each community 
anathematising the other on account of the fine point of 
doctrine. 

As with most controversies, it was possible for each 
party to point to testimony in the writings of venerated 
Fathers of antiquity that seemed to favour its own specific 
contention. That is nearly always the case, because it is 
controversy that sharpens definitions ; and inasmuch as 
there is certainly something to be said for both sides of an 
argument in which sincere and able men are engaged, it is 
pretty certain that before the ideas crystallise on one side 
or the other they will be found in a mixed state of solution. 
Thus Tertullian in the West seemed to favour what was 
adopted later as the Eastern view, when he said, Spiritum 
non aliunde puto quam a Patre per Filium} and Hilary of 
Poitiers, the most important literary defender of the 
Nicene Creed in the West during the fourth century, writes, 
Loqui de Eo (i.e. the Holy Spirit) non necesse est, Qui a 
Patre et Filio aicctoribus confitendus est,^ and at the close, 
referring to the Holy Spirit, he says, ex te 'per unigenitum 
suum ; ^ and again explicitly, A Patre procedit Spiritus 
San^tus, sed a Filio et a Patre mittitur.^ On the other 
hand, Athanasius in the East seems to anticipate the 
Western view when he writes, " The Word gives to the 
Spirit, and whatever the Spirit hath, He hath from the 
Word." ^ This may not refer to original being. St. Basil 
is more definite, writing, " Since the Holy Spirit . . . de- 

1 Adv. Praxean. 4. ^ De Trin. ii. 29. ^ Ihid. xii. 57. 

^ Ihid. viii. 20 — an important passage discussing this very question. 
5 Cont. Ar. iii. 25. 



THE GREAT SCHISM 



239 



pendeth ^ from the Son, and hath His being dependent ^ 
from the Father as its cause, whence also He pro- 
ceedeth." ^ The latter part of this sentence would appear 
to favour the Eastern view. Nevertheless in another 
place Basil writes, " God generates, not as man, but truly 
generates. And that which is generated of Him sends 
forth the Spirit through His mouth." * On the other hand, 
Gregory Nazianzen definitely asserts that the Spirit pro- 
ceeds from the Father only.^ 

Ambrose appears to be the first to teach in express 
terms that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father 
and the Son. Thus he writes, " The Holy Spirit also 
when he proceeds from the Father and the Son,^ is not 
separated from the Father, is not separated from the 
Son " ; ^ and Epiphanius frequently teaches that the Holy 
Spirit is from both.^ 

Augustine frequently teaches that the procession is 
from both the Father and the Son.^ As yet, however, 
nobody had ventured to tamper with the venerated creed 
so as to insert this idea into it. As far as has yet been 
pointed out, " the first known instance in which the 
Filioque was inserted into the Processional Clause of the 
Symbol " '^^ is at the third council of Toledo (a.d. 589). It 
reappears in the fourth (a.d. 633) and sixth (a.d. 638) 
councils of Toledo. The doctrine was received in England 
at the council of Hatfield (a.d. 680). Passing on to the 
eighth century, we find Tarasius in his letter announcing 
his elevation to the patriarchate of Constantinople writing 
of the Holy Spirit as " proceeding from the Father through 
the Son " — the Greek doctrine. This expression was 

^ ijpTrjTai. 2 i^fiiifxAvov. ^ Upis. xxxviii. 3. 

^ Adv. Eunomiiim. ^ Or at. 1 ; De Filio, 1. 

• Gum proeedit a Patre et Filio. ' De Sp. S. i. 10. 

^ irapd {Ancor. Ixvii.), {Hssr. Ixxiv. 7) of Both, and irapd of the 
Father, but e| of the Son {Ancor. viii. 9). 

* e.g. Trin. xv. 48 and. passim. 

'^^ Howard, The Filioque and the Schism, pp. 18, 19 — a book to which I 
am indebted for much information on this subject, and the quotations given 
aboYt. 



240 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



vehemently disputed in the Caroline Books — theological 
writings claiming the sanction of Charles the Great, who 
forwarded them to Pope Hadrian, and the controversy wag 
now fully alive. After a council at Aix-la-Chapelle (a.d. 
809), Charles sent legates to confer with the pope (Leo 
III.) on the subject. Leo, while approving of the doc- 
trine, hesitated about the insertion of it in the venerated 
creed. Four years later the council of Aries formally 
sanctioned the double procession. 

After this, when the quarrel broke out between Photius 
and Nicolas, the patriarch charged the Eoman Church with 
heresy for accepting what he reckoned an error in the 
Western doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit. Still, in 
spite of this difficulty and all other grounds of quarrel, 
there was no formal severance between the two churches 
till the middle of the eleventh century. Meanwhile the 
clause which was the source of so much contention was 
being gradually adopted by all the local churches in the 
West. It is a question whether the insertion of it in the 
creed was ever formally authorised by the Church of Eome 
in a council at which the pope was represented.^ 

We now approach the final rupture. Michael Ceru- 
larius, who was ordained patriarch of Constantinople in 
the year 1043, addressed an encyclical letter to the 
bishops of Apulia, some nine or ten years later, in which 
he sought closer union with the Western Church, at the 
same time mentioning some of the difficulties in the way 
of such union, the chief of which was the Western use of 
unleavened bread at the Eucharist.^ The last item that he 
referred to was the Dogma of the Procession from the Son. 
This letter fell into the hands of the pope, Leo ix., who 
addressed a reply to the patriarch in a very different 
spirit, ending with a threat that if necessary he would 
not " Seethe the kid in its mother's milk," but " scrub its 
mangy hide with biting vinegar and salt." ^ The patriarch 

^ Dr. DoUinger attributed the insertion of it to Pope Benedict viii. on the 
demand of the Emperor Henry ii. , in a.d. 1014. See Howard, op. cit. p. 38. 
a Pro eo maximo, quod de azymis, etc. ^ Mansi, xix. 64.U. 



THE GREAT SCHISM 



241 



refusing to submit to the pope's directions, the papal 
legates formally laid on the altar of St. Sophia a sentence 
of anathema denouncing eleven evil doctrines and practices 
of Michael and his supporters, and cursing them with the 
awful imprecation : " Let them be Anathema Maranatha, 
with Simoniacs, Valerians, Arians, Donatists, Nicholaitans, 
Severians, Pneumatomachi, Manichees, and Nazarenes, and 
with all heretics ; yea, with the devil and his angels. 
Amen. Amen. Amen" (July 16, a.d. 1054). The 
schism was now complete. 

The modern mind is naturally amazed that so huge a 
disaster to Christendom could be seriously promoted by so 
fine a point of controversy as the Filioque clause. We 
have seen that this was by no means the only ground of 
contention. It was but the last ingredient in a bitter cup 
which the Eastern Church refused to take from the hands 
of overbearing Koman prelates. Then we must remember 
that, all along, the deplorable mistake of substituting doc- 
trinal orthodoxy for personal faith was maintained by both 
branches of the Church. Nor was the doctrinal point 
under dispute without what people thought to be serious 
consequences. Some have revived it in recent times. 
When the idea of the immanence of God has suggested 
that the Divine presence could be secured without the 
mediation of Christ, it has been argued that the Spirit of 
God comes to us from Christ ; that otherwise the special 
Christian gospel would vanish. But this was not the ques- 
tion at the time of the dispute. It was not how we 
receive the Spirit ; but how the mysterious existence of 
the Third Person in the Trinity comes to be in itself. The 
Greeks allowed that we receive the Spirit through Christ 
Still their opponents thought that the honour of Christ 
was involved in the controversy. It was in the West, in 
St. Augustine and the Athanasian Creed, for example, that 
the absolute equality of the Son with the Father was em- 
phasised. The Filioque clause seemed to agree with that 
equality, the Greek rejection of the clause to discredit it. 



i6 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CRUSADES 

(a) Official reports and letters from individual Crusaders ; Fulcher, 

Gesta Peregrinantium Francorum, the diary of a witness ; 
Albert of Aix, Chronicle, second-hand, from eye-witnesses, 
with masses of details uncritically handled ; William 
of Tyre, Historia Berum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, 
also in touch with eye-witnesses, and using written sources, 
a book composed with discrimination and literary skill, but 
mingling legend, toned down, with historical fact — the 
Herodotus of the Middle Ages ; Anna Comnena, Alexias ; 
Nicetas, Historia ; Chronicles of the Crusades (Bohn) ; The 
Chronicle of Morea (14th century ; ed. Schmidtt). 

(b) Gibbon, chaps. Iviii.-lxi. ; Michaud, History of the Crusades (Eng. 

trans.), popular, rich in incident, untrustworthy ; H. von Sybel, 
History and Literature of the Crusades (Eng. trans., edited 
by Lady Duff Gordon), a valuable critical study ; Archer and 
Kingsford, The Crusades ("Story of the Nations") ; S. Lane 
Poole, Saladin, and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. 

For the most part the Crusades have been studied from 
the standpoint of Western Europe, since it was there that 
they originated. Instigated by the Latin Church, they were 
carried on by swarms of devotees, fanatics, penitents, and 
adventurers from France, Germany, Italy, England. While 
the goal of their enterprise was in the East, and while the 
people most seriously affected by their achievements were 
Orientals, the Eastern Church and Empire took but a 
small part in the actual movement, which was a great 
upheaval and eruption of Western Christendom. Neverthe- 
less, it falls in with the object of the present volume to 
study the Crusades from the novel standpoint of that half 
of Christendom which was the witness of the romantic 

2i2 



THE CRUSADES 



243 



feats of chivalry that adorned these quaint wars fought on 
its own soil. Too often it was the victim of their disastrous 
consequences. What did the Crusades mean to the Eastern 
Church ? Did they bring it liberation, security, prosperity ? 
That is the question which forces itself upon us when we 
plant ourselves in imagination at Constantinople or Antioch, 
at Tyre or Jerusalem, and watch the sanguinary fights of 
Latins and Teutons with Turks and Saracens. 

If we would take a broad view of the situation, we 
must not be satisfied to regard the Crusades either as mere 
freaks of fanaticism, or as only European police manoeuvres 
for the protection of pilgrims. Their immediate object 
was recovery of the sacred sites of Palestine from desecra- 
tion by the infidels, and their direct provocation was !;he 
ill-treatment at times endured by people who visited those 
sacred sites. Palmers' tales told by the fireside and in 
the market-place stirred the minds of men in the 
towns and villages of Europe. But when we orientate the 
whole movement we see that these wars take their place 
in the age-long conflict between Islam and Christendom. 
That conflict began in the seventh century when Mohammed 
started on his conquering career ; it will not cease till the 
cross is seen again on the dome of St. Sophia in place of the 
usurping crescent, till the last Turkish sultan is dethroned, 
and the last Turkish pasha dismissed. Nevertheless these 
strange enterprises had their own peculiar features, which 
happily are without parallel in history ; for the world has 
never seen less wisdom or greater incompetence, attended 
by more waste of life and deeper misery, in proportion to 
the purpose pursued and the end accomplished. 

In their actual inception the Crusades sprang from the 
pilgrimages. As early as the fourth century a continuous 
stream of immigrants from Western Europe was pouring 
into Palestine. Some came and went, like the modern 
tourists ; others remained to live and die in the Holy Land. 
When Jerome settled down for life in a cave at Bethlehem, 
the fame of so eminent a man induced many to follow his 
example. Under his influence Paula came from Eome, and 



244 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



being a woman of social position and religious reputation, she 
induced many other Eoman ladies to join her. There were 
two colonies of ascetics from Italy — one of men, and the other 
of women — settled in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. 
These processes — the settling of immigrants and the 
pilgrimages of temporary visitors — continued without 
intermission except in times of war. Thus Western 
Europe was always in touch with the East. In the break- 
up of civilisation and the consequent deepening ignorance 
of the Dark Ages, the value of relics as fetishes rose ; and 
then those primary but untransferable relics, the scenes of 
our Lord's birth at Bethlehem, and death and burial at 
Jerusalem, came to be adored pre-eminently. 

The Persian occupation in the sixth century only put a 
temporary check to the pilgrimages ; and the Mohammedan 
conquest of the country, which followed so soon after its 
recovery by Heraclius, hindered them much less than might 
have been expected, for the early caliphs were more 
tolerant of unbelievers than the Christian emperors of 
heretics. Especially was this the case with the enlightened 
and mild caliphs of the Fatimite line who resided in Egypt, 
and it was a good thing for the pilgrims that Jerusalem 
came under their authority and protection. One short 
interval of fearful persecution occurred under the mad 
caliph, El-Hakim, who ended by outraging the principles 
of his fellow-Mohammedans, in proclaiming himself the 
creator of the universe, and was slain by order of his sister 
as a menace to Islam. This terrible man had most 
cruelly oppressed both the Jews and the Christians under 
his power. It is said that in the year 1010 he ordered 
the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre ; if so, his order 
could not have been effectually executed. 

A far worse calamity was soon to follow. The Turks 
swarmed over Syria and Asia Minor, defeating the effemi- 
nate Arab caliphs of the Abbasside line. Toghrul, the 
grandson of Seljuk, had adopted Mohammedanism,^ and in 

^ Michael the Syrian gives three reasons for the ready amalgamation of 
Jtjje Turks with the Arabs an(i their speedy adoption of Islam — (1) their 



THE CRUSADES 



245 



the year 1055, after conquering Persia and regions farther 
west, he was appointed sultan, or vice-regent for the 
caliph. This man was succeeded by his nephew, Alp 
Arslan, who conquered Armenia and defeated the Emperor 
Eomanus Diogenes at the battle of Manzikert (a.d. 1071). 
All Anatolia was now at the mercy of the Turks, who 
continued to press north and west till they threatened 
Constantinople. In the year 1081 the sultan fixed his 
headquarters at Nicaja, the sacred centre of Christian 
orthodoxy. Happily for the world the confusion into which 
the Byzantine Empire had been thrown by the defeat of 
Eomanus was now subsiding, and a strong prince, Alexius 
Comnenus, was on the throne. But he could do little to 
stem the spreading flood of barbarism. A ghastly peril 
threatened the remnant of the empire of the Csesars. 
The Arabs had received culture from Greeks and Persians ; 
and their policy had become pacific and moderately liberal. 
But the Turks were fierce, brutal Mongols from Central 
Asia, little better than savages, spreading destruction and 
ruin in their path. Their capture of Syria and Asia 
Minor threatened the ruin of civilisation throughout those 
regions which for centuries had been in the van of human 
progress. Happily they soon came to some extent under 
Persian civilising influences, or all would have been lost. 

In his despair the emperor sent urgent requests to 
Europe for assistance. Doubts have been thrown on 
a letter he is said to have addressed to Eobert, Count of 
Flanders — a brother-in-law of William the Conqueror, 
especially for the reason that in it Alexius mentions the 
beauty of the women of Constantinople as an inducement 
for the warriors of the West to come to the rescue of his 
city. The letter exists in several forms, and therefore 
manifestly it has been tampered with. While we cannot be 
sure of its original features in every particular, there can 

own earlier Monotheism ; (2) the fact that they found Turkish immigrants 
already settled in Persia, which had been won over by the Mohammedan 
power some time previously ; (3) the service of Turks as mercenaries in the 
army of the caliph, Chronicle (ed. Chabot), vol. iii., p. 156. 



246 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



be no reasonable doubt that the emperor did write some 
such letter, appealing for aid in his desperate need. " From 
Jerusalem," he says, " to the ^gean, the Turkish hordes 
have mastered all ; their galleys, sweeping the Black Sea 
and the Mediterranean, threaten the imperial city itself, 
which, if fall it must, had better fall into the hands of 
Latins than of pagans."^ 

Here then was a new motive for the Crusades unexpect- 
edly sprung upon the Western world. Had Constantinople 
fallen into the hands of the Turks nearly four centuries 
earlier than the actual time of that fate, and this when the 
Asiatic invaders were flushed with their recent victories in 
Asia Minor, and before the kingdoms of Europe had become 
consolidated and strengthened as great national powers, it 
is difficult to see what could have prevented the westward 
rush of the devastating flood from sweeping over all 
Christendom, and reducing Italy and France to the con- 
dition of Syria and Anatolia. From this threatened doom 
of Christianity and civilisation the world was saved by the 
earlier Crusades. That, and not the sentimental glory of 
the recovery of the sacred sites, or the pitiable achievement 
of the temporary establishment of the little, shadowy 
kingdom of Jerusalem, is their supreme, their one solid 
result. Yet, stupendous as this task was and momentous 
as its consequences were, the thought of it was by no 
means uppermost in the minds of the Crusaders. They 
were jealous of the Greeks, as uneducated people commonly 
are jealous of their more cultivated neighbours, especially 
when the latter display the airs of superior persons, as the 
Greeks were only too ready to do. Besides, were not 
these Byzantine heretics excommunicated and cursed by 
the holy pope ? The behaviour of the Crusaders at 
Constantinople and other Eastern cities was scarcely that 
of a lifeboat crew saving the victims of a shipwreck ; nor 
did the people they rescued evince much gratitude towards 
their deliverers. The character and conduct of many of 

^ Martene, Thesaur. p. 266 ff. Cf. for the Abbott Guilbert's account of 
this celebrated letter, " Lappenberg " in Fertz. Archiv. vi. p. 630. 



THE CRUSADES 



247 



the Crusaders rendered them perfectly odious to the 
men and women on whom they were billeted. The 
whole matter is very complicated. Still, when we 
consider the course of events, we must come to the 
conclusion that for history the supreme significance of 
the Crusades lies in the fact that they put a check on 
the Turkish advance, and so effectually broke its power 
that the fatal consequences momentarily threatened were 
for ever prevented. He who believes that God is in 
history will see the fanaticism of relic worship over- 
ruled for the deliverance of Christendom from total 
destruction. 

While the appeal of Alexius and the thundercloud in 
the East to which it pointed may have furnished the 
motives of statesmen, it was the maltreatment of holy 
pilgrims and the desecration of holy sites that roused the 
passion of the multitude. In this age of relic worship it 
was intolerable that infidels should hold the most sacred 
of all relics — the cave in which the Saviour was born, the 
Cross on which He had died, and the tomb in which He 
was buried. A practical age will smile at the fanaticism 
of such a thought rousing Europe to a war fever. But it 
has been justly observed that we have here a rare instance 
of warfare waged for an idea. For this reason we may 
perceive in the inception of the Crusades the poetry of 
chivalry, as we see in the legends that followed them its 
romance ; unhappily, when we come to study the grim 
story of the actual events, poetry and romance vanish in 
horrors of carnage. 

The popes have the credit of originating the Crusades 
and of being their chief promoters. The earliest effort of 
the kind has been sought in a letter ascribed to Pope 
Sylvester ii., about the year 1000, in the midst of the 
crisis of gloom and terror when people were expecting 
the end of the world. This letter is addressed to all 
Christians in the name of the church at Jerusalem, 
beseeching them to pity the miseries of the Holy City and 
come to its rescue with money if not with arms; but its 



248 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

genuineness cannot be sustained.^ Gregory VIL, the great 
Hildebrand (a.d. 1073-1085), seriously purposed inaugu- 
rating a crusade, and was only hindered from doing so, after 
50,000 pilgrims had agreed to follow him, by the complica- 
tion of affairs in Europe that demanded his attention. He 
said, " He would rather expose his life to deliver the holy 
places than live to command the entire universe." Had 
this remarkable man devoted his genius and energy to 
the enterprise, no doubt great results would have been 
achieved. But the actual origination of the first Crusade 
was the work of Urban ii. (a.d. 1088-1099), who held 
a council at Piacenza, in which he broached the scheme, 
and then, crossing the Alps, convened a larger and more re- 
presentative council at Clermont (November 1095), where, 
after the settlement of French affairs, he called upon the 
people of Europe to aid him in rescuing the Holy Sepulchre. 
The popular imagination has seized on Peter the Hermit, 
who came from Amiens, as the real inspirer of the Crusades, 
and Michaud has written a dramatic description of the 
interview between this strange person and Urban at 
Clermont, in which the pope takes quite the second place ; 
but that conversation is wholly imaginary. Peter was not 
even present at the council. The organisation and spread 
of the movement through Europe must be attributed to 
the pope. On the other hand, we should beware of the 
modern tendency to undervalue Peter's influence. An 
enthusiast of intense fervour, he set all the northern parts 
of France on fire with his passionate eloquence as he rode 
about from town to town, bareheaded and barefooted, 
carrying a huge cross before him, and preaching in churches 
and streets and highways. Everywhere his proposal was 
entertained with enthusiasm as from the call of heaven. 
Deus vuU, Deus vult, cried the educated ecclesiastics in 
the council ; Dieu la volt, Dieu la volt, echoed the rustics 
in their vernacular. The council freed the Crusaders from 
taxes, and ordered that debtors who joined their ranks 
should not be pursued. An extraordinary assortment of 
^ Hp. cvii. in Bouquet, x. 426. 



THE CRUSADES 



249 



people rushed into the enterprise, including old men, 
women with children, prostitutes. 

Peter and his horde of peasants were too impatient to 
wait for the lords and knights who were coming together 
in mihtary array. Without any organisation or commis- 
sariat the simple multitude set out for their tremendous 
walk in the spring of the year 1096. After they had 
crossed Austria and passed the confines of civilisation, they 
still had 600 miles of forest and wilderness to traverse 
in Hungary and Bulgaria before they could reach Con- 
stantinople. They came on like a swarm of locusts eating 
up the countries they passed through. We can neither 
blame them nor the people of these lands when we see 
that raids of hunger provoked retaliation and slaughter. 
The multitude was divided into two parts for better 
provisioning — half under Peter, and half under another 
leader, Walter the Penniless. They were in a pitiable 
plight when they reached Thrace, and all might have 
perished if the Emperor Alexius had not sent to rescue 
them. 

We can understand with what disgust the citizens of 
Constantinople viewed the approach of the ragged host. 
Alexius was glad to ship them across the Bosphorus 
as quickly as possible. There they would have been 
killed outright, if it had not been for the dissentions 
that had broken out among the Turks. But even as 
things were, a great number — Gibbon accepts the figure 
at " three hundred thousand " — perished before a single 
city was rescued from the infidels. 

In August a more regular army followed, under Hugh 
the Great, Count of Vermandois ; Eobert of Normandy, the 
eldest son of William the Conqueror ; Stephen of Chartres, 
said to own as many castles as there are days of the year ; 
Eaymond of many titles ; Bohemond, son of Eobert 
Guiscard ; Tancred, the perfect knight of chivalry cele- 
brated in Tasso's poem ; but, above all, Godfrey of Bouillon, 
Duke of Lorraine, a man who combined a spirit of genuine, 
unselfish religious devotion with the talents of a great 



250 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



general. Even this army was ill-organised under its 
several leaders, and the undisciplined footmen immensely 
outnumbered the knights on horseback. Like the ragged 
regiments of their precursors, these troops also came 
through Germany and Hungary, and were admitted into 
Constantinople with fear and suspicion. Crossing the 
Hellespont, they defeated the Turks at Nicaea. Then they 
divided. One body struck off east under Baldwin and 
conquered Edessa. The main army proceeded to Antioch, 
which fell after a fearful siege, both sides having suffered 
very heavily.^ At length Jerusalem was surrounded, be- 
sieged, and taken (July 15, 1099).2 Then, with lighted 
torches, but still among scenes of blood, the Crusaders made 
their way to the goal of their difficult undertaking — the 
Holy Sepulchre. Part of the supposed cross, still contained 
in its silver casket, was recovered and borne with singing 
in procession to " the temple." " And all the people went 
after, which wept for pitie, as much as if they had seen the 
Saviour Jesus Christ still hanging on the Cross. They all 
held them for much recompense of a great treasure that 
our Lord had thus discovered." ^ 

Godfrey of BouiUon was elected king of Jerusalem; 
and, though he declined the honour of the title as unworthy 
to hold it, he accepted the actual rule.* Godfrey died the 
next year, and his brother Baldwin, when summoned from 
Edessa to succeed him, being less scrupulous, allowed 
himself to be crowned at Bethlehem (a.d. 1100). Thus 
there was founded the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. 

The sequel is an anti-climax. Having accomplished the 
end of their vow, the mass of the surviving Crusaders re- 
turned home, and the leaders who remained in charge of the 
chief cities that had been captured — Jerusalem, Antioch, and 
Edessa — found to their dismay that they were left stranded, 
like shipwrecked sailors on three desert islands. Both 
politically and ecclesiastically their position was altogether 
anomalous. They had formally submitted to the Greek 

1 See William of Tyre, pp. 84-143. 

^ Ihid. pp. 167-188. ^ Ihid. p. 194. ^ lUd. pp. 192, 193. 



THE CRUSADES 



251 



emperor as the condition of being permitted to pass 
through his territory ; but in reality they showed him no 
fealty whatever, but behaved as foreign princes colonising 
a land that they had won by the sword. This was the 
political position. The ecclesiastical was not more satis- 
factory. They were now in the region of the Eastern 
Church ; yet they owned allegiance to the pope, wHose 
supremacy that Church did not recognise and who had 
denounced it as heretical. In the eyes of the patriarch 
of Constantinople the Crusaders were both schismatics and 
heretics. Their subsequent conduct did not lead the Greek 
Church to view them with favour ; for they abandoned 
themselves to the pleasures and luxuries of Oriental life. A 
Latin patriarchate was founded at Jerusalem, with Dagobert, 
a haughty, ambitious prelate, as its first occupant, having f our 
archbishoprics and a number of bishoprics under him. 

The kingdom of Jerusalem lasted for nearly a century ; 
but during much of this time it was in a state of degenera- 
tion and decay. The descendants of the Crusaders, called 
FuUeni, were for the most part a weak and worthless race, 
rendered effete by luxury and self-indulgence. Damascus 
was still unconquered. In the year 1146 Edessa was 
recaptured by the Saracens. Then Europe was alarmed, 
and a second Crusade was projected and inspired by a 
much greater man than any of the originators of the first 
— Bernard of Clairvaux, the reformer of monasticism and 
restorer of the papacy to its power and dignity. The 
earHer Crusade had not seen any sovereign at its head. 
But this new movement was led by both Louis vii., king of 
France, and the German emperor, Conrad iii. It proved 
to be a dismal failure. The Greeks were now more 
than timorous and suspicious: they actually opposed the 
defenders of Christendom. There is good reason to believe 
that the Emperor Manuel, a warrior of gigantic personal 
prowess, entered into secret communications with the 
sultan and treacherously misled the Crusaders. Be that 
as it may, the siege of Damascus failed, and the princes 
returned home having effected nothing. 



252 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

Nevertheless for two centuries the idea of the Crusades 
was kept alive in Europe, and every spring saw fresh 
bodies of men sewing the cross in gold, or silk, or cloth 
on to their garments, and setting out for the holy war. It 
was a great calamity that originated the next extensive 
movement of this kind — known as the third Crusade. In 
October 1187, Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Sultan 
Saladin. This roused the old Emperor Frederick Barba- 
rossa to go himself to recover the Holy City. He defeated 
the sultan at Iconium, but was drowned in attempting to 
ford the river Calycadnus (a.d. 1190). Eichard i. of Eng- 
land now became the chief leader of the Crusade, amid 
great difficulties caused by the jealousies of other princes 
and his own inconsiderate eagerness, for he was but a 
glorified schoolboy. Eichard and Saladin — who was 
neither a Turk nor an Arab, but a Kurd, and therefore, 
like the Crusaders themselves, of the Aryan stock — came 
to terms, which left Jerusalem in the hands of the courteous 
Moslem, but allowed the Christians possession of the Holy 
Sepulchre and the right of pilgrimage there. 

The story of the fourth Crusade might well be told 
with tears of shame and humiliation for the disgrace which 
it was to Christendom. In the yearJL 2 17 Innocent in. 
summoned the nations to yet another attempt to rescue 
the holy sites from the possession of the infidel. No 
emperor or king now responded. There was no great 
Bernard to inspire enthusiasm. But a preacher of a dis- 
tinctly lower type, Fulco of Neuilly, succeeded in obtaining 
support from a number of French nobles, who involved 
themselves in unworthy obligations to blind Dandolo, the 
patriotic doge of Venice. He would supply them with 
ships if they would do his business for him. Venice was 
now quarrelling with Constantinople, and the Crusaders 
consented to begin their expedition with an attack on their 
fellow-Christians, the Greeks. They first took Zaras and 
then sailed up to the very walls of Constantinople, gazing 
with wonder on the gilt domes and spires of its 500 
churches. The Crusaders — we should say, the invaders — 



THE CRUSADES 



253 



were accompanied by young Alexius, son of the Emperor 
Isaac, who had been blinded and imprisoned by his brother 
Alexius Angelus, now usurping the throne. Thus their 
expedition might be compared to the French aid offered to 
the Pretender in England. But while this gave some face 
to the invasion, the sequel showed that it was really an 
outbreak of the long smouldering enmity between the East 
and the West. 

At the approach of the Latins the timid Greek troops 
and their emperor fled from the camp where they had 
assembled with a view of opposing the Crusaders. After 
an easy siege the gates were thrown open, and the Latins 
entered the city in triumph. They so far carried out their 
programme as to release the imprisoned ex -Emperor Isaac 
and crown the young Alexius, together with his father, at 
St. Sophia. The junior emperor had promised that when 
his father and he were restored he would put an end to 
the schism which separated the Greeks from the Latin 
Church. Isaac was obliged to consent to this and other 
humiliating conditions — namely, a money payment of 
200,000 silver marks, and the rescue of the Holy Land. 
But the difficulties in the way of fulfilling his promises 
were very great. A considerable sum of money was 
paid over at once to the Crusaders ; but no serious steps 
were taken to unite the divided churches. Before long 
the Latin visitors became very unpopular. They were 
pressing their demands with imperious insolence, forcing 
their way into the palace, and threatening the timorous 
Alexius that they would no longer recognise his sove- 
reignty if he did not comply. But that was beyond 
his power. When the people perceived his helplessness, 
they besieged the Senate clamouring for another emperor. 
A time of confusion followed, in which young Alexius 
was strangled, and his father, blind Isaac, died of fright. 
The Latins then took Constantinople by storm under the 
Marquis of Montferrat. The city - was sacked. Many 
of its priceless treasures were carried off to Europe; 
more were destroyed. The patriarch fled on an ass without 



254 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



a single attendant. The sacred vessels in the churches 
were turned into drinking cups. Icons, even portraits of 
Christ, were used as gaming tables. At St. Sophia the 
splendid altar was broken in pieces, and a harlot, whom 
Nicetas calls " a minion of the furies," seated herself on 
the patriarch's throne, and sang and danced in the church, 
ridiculing the Greek hymns and . processions. It was a 
scene of outrage and profanity anticipating Paris at the 
Eevolution.^ 

A Latin Empire was now set up at Constantinople with 
Baldwin of Flanders as its first emperor (a.d. 1204). The 
Pope Innocent ill. at first expressed strong disapproval of 
the perversion of a Crusade against the infidels into a war 
of conquest fought with Christians. But these Greek 
Christians were heretics and schismatics, and when he 
saw the great city of Constantinople brought under 
Latin authority he sent the pallium to the new patriarch, 
Thomas Morosini, a Venetian, and boasted that at last 
Israel, after destroying the calves at Dan and Bethel, was 
again united to Judah. Of course this was no real end to 
the separation of the two churches. Among the Greeks 
the Latin patriarch was regarded as an intruder ; he was 
only recognised by the dominant invaders from Europe. The 
rule of the Franks at Constantinople lasted for about sixty 
years ; but it was no credit to its unscrupulous founders. 
At length, with the aid of the Genoese, Michael viii. 
(Palseologus) expelled them and restored the Greek Empire 
(A.D. 1261). 

Meanwhile the Crusades went on as an intermittent 
stream of warriors pouring over from Europe into Egypt 
and Syria. In the year 1228 the German emperor, 
Frederic ii., driven to make good his word by threats of 
excommunication from Pope Gregory ix., after much pro- 
crastination, set off for the Holy Land, where by good 
fortune he found that the Sultan Camel of Egypt was 
engaged in war with his nephew, and therefore willing to 
make terms with the Franks. This Mussulman ruler 
1 Nicetas, p. 757 ff. 



THE CRUSADES 



255 



granted them a considerable part of the Holy Land, 
including Jerusalem. Frederic claimed the kingdom through 
lolanthe, whom he had recently married, and placed the 
crown on his own head in the church of the Holy 
Sepulchre. But his troubles with the pope compelled him 
CO return home the next year. 

The last Crusade of importance was undertaken by 
Louis IX. of France, a man of deep personal piety, who 
deservedly earned the name of Saint Louis. Jerusalem 
had been conquered and the inhabitants most horribly 
treated by a rude tribe from the steppes of Asia, the 
Ghowaresmians, who, having fled before the Mongols, were 
lured by the Egyptian Sultan Ayoub to serve as his mer- 
cenaries. The Christian dominion was now restricted to 
Acre. Louis landed in Egypt in a.d. 1249, suffered defeat, 
and was taken prisoner. Eansomed at a great price, he 
sailed for Acre the next year ; but he could do little, and 
he was compelled to return home in the year 1254. A 
later attempt by St. Louis to break the Mohammedan 
power at Tunis proved also to be a failure. Acre fell in the 
year 1291, and with its fall the last remnant of the Latin 
power in the East vanished. Henceforth all Palestine 
remained under the rule of Islam. 



CHAPTEE VIII 



THE GREEK CHURCH AT THE FALL OF THE 
BYZANTINE EMPIRE 

(a) Anna Gomnena, Alexias ; Mcetas, Historia, de Rebus post 
C. P. etc. ; Pachymer ; Niceplioras Gregoras ; Ducas ; Chal- 
condyles ; Phranza ; and new sources later tlian Gibbon, 
especially Nicolo Barbaro, Giornale delV Assedio di Constan- 
tinopoli — the diary of a besieged resident ; and Critobulus, 
Life of Mahomet (/Sio? tov MaafiiS j8'). 

(&) Gibbon, cbaps. Ixi.-lxviii. ; Bury, Later Roman Empire ; 
Oman, Byzantine Empire; Pears, Destruction of the Greek 
Empire, 1903 ; Revue de VOrient Ch/rMen, 1'® Annee, 1896, 
No. 3, 1. 

The decay of the Byzantine Empire involved the orthodox 
Church in two serious calamities. The Turkish victories 
brought disaster to those Christians who looked on Constanti- 
nople as the metropolis of their religion, over and above 
the ruin of the State of which the same city was the capital 
and at times almost the whole territory. That was bad 
enough. But the mischief was aggravated by the schism 
which divided the Eastern Church from the papal Church 
of the West. As we saw in the previous chapter, under 
these circumstances the advent of the Crusaders, who came 
as the rescuers of the East from the infidel, was regarded 
with very mixed feelings by the Christians on the spot. 
The Greeks hated the Latins at least as much as they 
feared the Turks. At times we find the emperor plotting 
with the sultan against his friends from the West. The 
conduct of the invading hosts intensified this antipathy. 

The chronicles make it clear that this must have been 
the case even before there was any outbreak of hostility 

256 



GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 257 

between the two parties. Take, for instance, some of the 
occurrences in Syria and Palestine during the first Crusade. 
After achieving their stupendous task, a task worthy of a 
greater epic than Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, in the success- 
ful siege of Antioch, the Crusaders proceeded to resume 
Christian worship in the city. In the churches they found 
icons with the eyes cut out, the noses scraped off, the 
whole smeared with filth. These they restored, putting 
the fabrics in good order. They settled salaries on the 
clergy and lavished on the churches gifts of gold and silver 
for crosses and chaHces, and silk for vestments and altar 
cloths. They re-established the patriarch John with much 
honour and solemnity. They even set up bishops in cities 
that hitherto had not possessed them. So friendly was 
their attitude that when they left Antioch and were on 
their way to Jerusalem the Syrian Christians volunteered 
as guides. All this was very pleasant. But the schism ! — 
what had become of the schism ? That was in no way 
healed. Personal convenience on one side, and some sense 
of gratitude, not to say common decency, on the other, 
kept it in abeyance for the time being ; but its re-emergence 
was inevitable, sooner or later. John of Antioch was in a very 
awkward position. He could not object to being restored 
to his rightful place, the patriarchal throne of Antioch ; 
and he could not be otherwise than courteous to the 
deliverers from the West, through whose heroic valour and 
almost incredible toil this happy result had been brought 
about. Yet how could he fraternise with heretics — men 
who affirmed the double procession of the Holy Ghost, 
asserted the supremacy of the bishop of Eome, and worst 
of all, used unleavened bread at the communion ? It was 
impossible. In this dilemma John chose the prudent if in- 
glorious course of retreating. He went to Constantinople 
" of his good will," our chronicler is careful to say, 
" without any force or constraint." ^ The post being thus 
vacated, the Crusaders felt no scruple in appointing another 
patriarch, and accordingly they chose Bernard, whom they 
^ William of Tyre, c. 144. 

17 



258 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



had previously made bishop of Tarsus ; he was a native of 
Valence who had come from the West as chaplain to the 
bishop of Puy. Of course he was a priest of the Latin 
Church and subject to the pope. It was the same with 
Dagobert whom the Crusaders had made patriarch of Jeru- 
salem. He was their patriarch ; he was no patriarch of the 
indigenous Christians. 

The situation at Constantinople was infinitely worse. 
It was a Christian city in the hands of a Christian 
government when the Crusaders captured it. Therefore 
it had its patriarch at the time. This man was John 
Camaterus.^ He fled to Didymotichum, but although he 
was no longer treated as the head of the Church, there was 
no disposition on the part of the Greeks to acknowledge 
the Latin usurper of his throne at St. Sophia. Two years 
later (a.d. 1205) Michael Antorianus was elected to the 
patriarchate by the Greeks of Nicsea with as much cere- 
mony as if it had been at St. Sophia ; and so the Greek 
Church went on in its independence notwithstanding the 
boasted union of East and West at Constantinople, for which 
Pope Innocent was grateful. 

When we plant ourself in imagination among the 
Greeks, we see how ridiculous the very idea of a Latin 
Empire at Constantinople must have seemed to them. 
There never was any Latin Empire in the East. A huge 
band of brigands had seized the city ; that was about all ^ 
that had been done. Theoretically the barons divided out 
the territory of the Byzantine Empire. But they did not 
even know what that territory was, for in their distribution 
they included Assyria and Egypt and other parts of the 
Turkish dominions. Meanwhile they were actually only in 
possession of Constantinople and its immediate neighbour- 
hood. Even here the " emperor " was little more than one of 
the barons who found it hard to maintain his authority over 
his turbulent fellow barons — like his contemporary King 
John in England. After reigning only one year the first 
*' emperor " Baldwin was lost and probably killed among 

^ Le Quien, Oriens C'hristianus, vol. i. p. 276. 



GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OP BYZANTINE EMPIRE 259 



the Bulgarians. His brother Henry, who succeeded him 
and reigned for ten years, stayed the persecution of the 
Greeks and permitted them to practise their religious rites 
at Constantinople. Here was a gleam of hope for a settle- 
ment ; but it vanished with the death of the liberal-minded 
" emperor." Peter, who followed, had only reigned for two 
years when he was lost among the mountains of Epirus, 
and nothing more was ever heard of him. Things went 
from bad to worse with the usurpation ; a blight had seized 
it from the first ; the doom of heaven was over it. The 
people fled from its hard taxation ; fields were left untilled ; 
trade died down ; abject poverty was the fate of the city and 
its rulers. The barons tore the copper off the domes of the 
churches in order to coin money. They sold the most 
sacred relics, chief among which was the crown of thorns, 
which went to St. Louis of France. The last " emperor " 
even pawned his own brother to some Venetian nobles as a 
pledge for a loan. This pitiable pretender to the throne of 
the Csesars spent most of his time in Europe, travelling 
from court to court and begging aid in money and men 
to defend his city. 

Meanwhile the real empire was partially pulling itself 
together again. When the Crusaders took Constantinople 
they seized the head. The limbs then broke off and 
organised themselves as three separate governments at 
Trebizond, at Thessalonica, and at Nicsea. The latter was 
the chief centre, and by degrees it extended its power and 
territory, till at last most of the Byzantine Empire as this 
had existed when Constantinople fell had been gathered 
under its rule. At the same time the Greek Church in 
the provinces went on in its accustomed way as though 
there were no Latin Empire at Constantinople, no Latin 
patriarch, no union with the West, no submission to the 
papacy. These things were confined to the brigands who 
occupied the city ; and those brigands, as we have seen, 
were being literally starved out. 

Such was the condition of affairs when in the year 
1261 some Greeks in the army of Michael Palseologus 



260 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

crept through a hole in the walls of the once impregnable 
city and quietly recovered Constantinople for its own 
people. But disappointment followed. The hopes kindled 
at Mcsea were not realised. It was impossible really to 
restore the Byzantine Empire. The so-called Crusaders — 
of the fourth Crusade — had done little good to themselves, 
and infinite harm to the empire. The wonderful system 
of Eoman administration was broken beyond possibihty of 
repair. Thus these pretended defenders of Christendom 
against Islam prepared the way for the final overthrow of 
Christian government in the East. If Constantinople had 
not been captured by Latin Christians in the thirteenth 
century, probably it would not have been besieged and taken 
by Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth. At the door of these, 
professed Crusaders lies the awful guilt of the ruin of the 
city and the opening of the road for the advent of a Turkish 
Empire in Europe and all its attendant miseries. 

The newly restored Greek government under Michael 
at Constantinople found itself opposed by two enemies — 
the Latin power in the West, coldly sympathetic with the 
exiled Baldwin, but more effectually energetic in response 
to the demands of the popes, and the Turkish power, grow- 
ing and spreading like a fungus till it reached the very 
gates of the city. Thus once again the Byzantine Empire 
shrank to the limits of the walls of Constantinople. 

It is worthy of notice that the Church did not decay 
with the empire. We have often had occasion to contrast 
the subserviency of the Greek clergy with the independence 
of the papacy. But we have met with many exceptions, 
and these are all the more remarkable from the fact that 
the patriarch of Constantinople never had the position held 
by the pope at Eome. If he resisted the government it 
was at his peril, for he was only a subject hving under the 
shadow of the imperial palace — not an independent prince, 
sometimes the most powerful personage in Europe, able to 
play one kingdom off against another, as was the case with 
the great Innocent III. and his able successors. 

Michael Palseologus stained his succession to the throne 



GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 261 



of Constantinople with an abominable crime. He was the 
tutor and guardian of John, the heir to the throne, a child 
only eight years old. It was expected that he would only 
act as regent, or at most as co-emperor. Instead of doing 
so, he seized the position of sole emperor, and blinded the 
boy to render him incapable of ever taking over the govern- 
ment.^ Indignant at the crime, the patriarch Arsenius 
summoned a synod of bishops, in which he formally excom- 
municated the emperor. Attention has been called to the 
fact that he did not go further and depose the criminal. 
But here we may note an important difference between the 
Eastern and the Western Churches. Popes deposed princes, 
because popes claimed for the Church supreme authority 
over the secular government. That claim was never put 
forth by the Greek Church. In the East the theory was 
that each had power over its own province, though in 
practice the secular interfered with the spiritual. This 
spiritual power was now a serious reality. Therefore 
Michael was thoroughly alarmed. He begged for penance 
to be substituted for excommunication. Arsenius replied 
that even if he were threatened with death he would never 
remove the excommunication. The emperor paid the 
patriarch a visit and asked if he desired his abdication, but 
when, as he was unbuckling his sword, the patriarch held 
out his hand as though to receive it, Michael drew back 
and did not complete the action. He even spoke among 
his friends about appealing to the pope. Some years passed. 
Again the emperor applied to the patriarch for absolution ; 
and again the stem servant of the God of righteousness re- 
fused. Then Michael could endure the strain no longer. 
He brought a number of charges against Arsenius — that he 
had shortened the matin prayer for the emperor, ordered 
the omission of the Trisagion, treated the sultan of the 
Seljukian Turks in a friendly way, etc., and on these 
grounds induced an assembly of bishops to depose him.^ 
We have an account of the synod's proceedings recorded by 
the clerk of the court. Arsenius was exiled, and his succes- 
^ Pachymer, iii 10 ; Gregory, iv. 4. ^ Pachymer, iv. 6. 



262 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

sor, Germanus, granted absolution to Michael, who however 
then persuaded him to retire, probably because he would 
not publish the fact. That was done by the next patriarch 
Joseph, a monk, who knew how to act the courtier. On 
the 2nd of February, a.d. 1267, there was a solemn 
function at St. Sophia, prepared for by a night spent in 
the church. The emperor cast himself on the ground 
before the patriarch, confessed his sin, and prayed for 
pardon. He remained prostrate while Joseph, in conjunction 
with the other bishops, read the absolution, after which he was 
admitted to the communion. Thus at last he had his wish. 
The whole story reveals surprising power in the Greek clergy, 
or rather, what is of more significance, a remarkable respect 
felt for religion and righteousness. It is not to be com- 
pared with Hildebrand's haughty conduct with the Emperor 
Henry ; it is more like Ambrose's treatment of Theodosius 
at Milan, when he refused to admit the Eoman emperor to 
the church with the stain of blood upon him. It was a 
moral protest, not an assertion of ecclesiastical arrogance. 

During the whole period of the restored Byzantine 
Empire the chief matter of diplomacy with the emperors 
was their attempt to efifect a union between the Eastern 
and Western Clmrches. This was purely a question of 
policy. There was no lofty quest for truth when dogma 
was under discussion, and no yearning of brotherly love 
when the attempt was to heal schism. The emperors, 
weak in arms and cramped for territory, desired in the first 
place to conciliate the popes ; then by means of their 
influence to prevent the Western powers from instigating 
a new " Crusade " for the restoration of that floating shadow, 
" the Latin Empire of Constantinople" ; and finally, to secure 
their aid in resisting the continual encroachments of the 
Turks. As early as A.D. 1262, the pope. Urban rv., had 
proclaimed a crusade against Michael as a usurper and a 
schismatic, and also against his friends the Genoese who 
had helped him. Urban had urged St. Louis to collect 
tithes for this object. Nothing had come of it, and a later 
pope, Gregory x., had replied to embassies from Michael 



GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 263 



that no time was so favourable as the present for putting 
an end to the Greek schism. Pachymer, the historian, our 
chief authority for this period, had joined the Latin 
Church. No doubt courtiers were ready to follow. 

The popes appear to have been entirely ignorant of the 
real condition of the Greek Church. Throughout these 
negotiations and all that followed there was not the slightest 
disposition on the part of that body to make any conces- 
sion or to take any steps towards union. The Greeks had 
suffered too much from the cruel invasion and tyrannical 
domination of the Latins to have the least desire for ecclesias- 
tical union with these people. The efforts towards union on 
the Byzantine side came wholly from the government, not 
at all from the people, the Church, or the clergy. Michael 
tried his utmost to persuade the patriarch and the bishops 
to join in his negotiations. But he failed completely. Is 
that surprising ? At this very time the Greeks heard that 
the Western powers were fitting out an expedition to restore 
the Latin Empire. To them reunion with the Western 
Church seemed to imply the restoration of an odious foreign 
tyranny. Therefore, when delegates from the pope visited 
Constantinople and tried to reason with the Greek bishops 
and persuade them to accept the obnoxious Filioque clause, 
they met with nothing but stubborn resistance. The 
bishops replied that whatever the emperor's threats might 
be, they would not consent to any alteration in the ancient 
formula. The patriarch put forward Veccus, a learned, 
eloquent man, to represent the Greek cause. After describing 
various kinds of people who might be regarded as heretics, 
Veccus came to the conclusion that the Latins were among 
those " who are not called, but who are heretics." 

Still Michael laboured for union. In the year 1274 
he induced some of the bishops to join him in sending 
delegates to Lyons with this end in view. Gregory x. 
accepted their visit as a sign that they admitted the 
Roman form of the creed and submitted to his supremacy. 
After the professions of the emperor and the bishops had 
been read by their envoys, a Te Deum was sung, and the 



264 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



anion of the churches proclaimed. The patriarch Joseph 
declining to submit, he was promptly deposed, and his 
orator Veccus, who had gone over to the emperor's side, set 
in his place. Michael had his reward. The pope refused 
Charles of Angou permission to attack him. But when 
Martin IV, was pope he had sources of information or a 
keenness of perception that had been denied to Gregory. 
He was not to be hoodwinked by Michael's compliant 
professions, made with the sole object of securing his 
throne and empire, but not representing the thought and 
will of his Church. In the year 1281 Martin put an end 
to all negotiations for the time being by excommunicating 
Michael and the Greeks as schismatics. The next year 
the emperor died, and his son and successor, Andronicus n., 
who reigned for forty-six years (a.d. 1282-1328), returned 
to the anti-papal policy. Veccus was forced to retire to a 
monastery and Joseph was restored to the patriarchate. 
Still being in danger both from the West, no longer re- 
strained by the papacy, and also from the Turks, Andronicus 
accepted the aid of Spanish mercenaries, the " Catalans," 
whose advent was the beginning of grievous trouble. 
Taking an independent com^se, these Spaniards were the 
first to introduce the Turks into Europe by inviting them 
to an alhance against an opposing faction at Constantinople. 

The chief ecclesiastical event of this long reign is 
the curious episode of the patriarch Athanasius and his 
anathemas. Next to the emperor, the patriarch was the 
most important personage in Constantinople. It was there- 
fore a serious matter to have Athanasius revealing himself 
as a stern, implacable ecclesiastic, scattering anathemas 
right and left. He became so unpopular that he was 
deposed and sent to a convent. A few years later, some 
lads, climbing a ladder to the top of a pillar in the dome 
of St. Sophia in search of a pigeon's nest, found there an 
earthen pot containing anathemas of Athanasius against 
the emperor and the rest of his enemies. The sequel of 
this curious incident sheds some light on the rehgious 
ideas of the times. Andronicus was terrified, and he sum- 



GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 265 



rnoned a synod of bishops to consider his future prospects. 
The synod pronounced that only the man who had written 
the curse could withdraw it. So the emperor went on foot, 
accompanied by the bishops, to the cell of Athanasius, who 
was persuaded to absolve the imperial offender and resume 
his own position as patriarch. 

Being in desperate straits, the next emperor, Andronicus 
m. (a.d. 1328—1341), reopened negotiations with the 
papacy, and sent a message to Pope John xxn. conveying 
his desire for union by the hands of some Dominican 
missionaries who were returning from Tartary. The pope 
replied by remitting preachers to Constantinople and by 
promising to do all he could to further the emperor's pious 
wish. On the death of Andronicus soon afterwards, the 
dangerous heritage of the throne of Constantinople fell to 
his son, John Palseologus, a child nine years of age, whose 
mother, Anne of Savoy, consented to the appointment of 
Cantacuzenus as regent; the next year (a.d. 1342) he was 
proclaimed joint-emperor. Cantacuzenus was a theologi- 
cally-minded emperor, who composed several controversial 
works of no weight or significance. He retired in the year 
1355, and the junior emperor John held the reins of 
government for the following thirty-six years. This emperor 
signalised the individuality of his policy by reopening 
negotiations with the papacy, but they came to nothing. 

The last and most important of all the serious attempts 
to reconcile the two churches occurred in the reign of 
John y. (sometimes reckoned John vn.), who reigned during 
the years 1425—1448. He found his shrunken dominion 
in a desperate condition. The Turks, who were now 
established at Adrianople and other places in Europe, and 
who had actually besieged Constantinople three years before, 
though ineffectually, were continually threatening the very 
existence of the empire. In the year 1429, following 
the precedent set by Michael Palseologus, John sent to 
Pope Eugenius to reopen negotiations for union and asking 
to receive an envoy at Constantinople to arrange matters 
between the two parties. Two years later the council 



266 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

of Bale met. Eugenius ordered the council to go to 
Bologna for the convenience of the Greeks who were to 
attend it. This the majority refused to do, denying the 
right of a pope to remove an oecumenical council, and 
alleging that the Bohemians, the followers of John Huss, 
had already been summoned to Bale. No doubt on their 
own account they were unwilling to cross the Alps and 
bring themselves into the power of the pope. Eugenius 
denounced this council as a " synagogue of Satan," and then 
summoned his own council at Ferrara ; it was subsequently, 
removed to Florence on account of the plague.^ In 
November 1437 the emperor set out with a large follow- 
ing. Joseph, the aged patriarch of Constantinople, though 
without entertaining any hope for a successful issue, was 
forced to accompany the party. One of the most important 
members of it was the famous preacher Sylvester Syropulus, 
who has left a valuable account of the expedition.^ Eugenius 
received them courteously and did his utmost to smooth 
the way to union. Both the pope and the emperor appear 
to have been actuated by a true desire to put an end to 
the schism. 

The visitors were struck with the splendour of Venice ; 
but when they were shown the treasures of St. Mark's, they 
thought, as Syropulus says, " These were once our own. 
They are the plunder of the Hagia Sophia and our holy 
monasteries." When the council was opened, after much 
delay, which the Greeks felt to be very irksome, six 
theologians on each side were appointed to formulate the 
points for discussion. It was not till they had removed to 
Florence, however, much against the wish of the Greeks at 
being dragged so far across Italy, that the serious debates 
began. 

There were two points to be considered with regard to 
the Filioque clause — (1) the question of the truth or error 
of it ; (2) the right of the Latins to add it to their creed. 

^ Following Belaraiine and other Roman Catholic writers, Hefele reckons 
this to be an oecumenical council, Hist. Counc. vol. v., Appendix, p. 413. 
2 Vera historia unionis non verce inter QrcRCOS et Latinos. ' 



GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 267 



With respect to the first point, the Greeks had several private 
conferences among themselves, by means of which they 
came to the conclusion that the Latins did not mean that 
the procession of the Holy Ghost was from " two principles," 
and on that understanding they decided that the language 
of the clause was not in conflict with the Greek doctrine 
that the procession is from the Father and through the 
Son. That is to say, they did not change their own 
position at all ; they simply admitted that the Latin 
position was not inconsistent with it. To this statement 
the council agreed. Surely that was a most remarkable 
concession on the part of the papal party, and thus far the 
victory must be accorded to the Greeks. If ideas rather 
than words are the essentials, the Eastern bishops did not 
give up anything. On the other hand, the Western 
bishops tacitly admitted that their test phrase was sus- 
ceptible of an interpretation harmonious with the Greek 
doctrine. What then had become of the Greek heresy, 
so often denounced by the popes ? It was allowed by a 
papal council to be no heresy. 

The second point was more difficult. The emperor 
was led to admit that the clause was in the creed of the 
seventh oecumenical council, the second council of Nicaea 
(a.d. 787); but the bishops knew better. Angry debates 
followed. At length, John, by the exertion of all his 
influence, brought his party round to allow that the phrase 
Filioque had been inserted into the creed lawfully and for 
a good reason. If the decision of the first point had been 
favourable to the Greeks, the pendulum had now swung in 
the opposite direction, and on the whole it must be admitted 
that the Latins had the advantage. It does not appear 
that the other matter of serious dispute — the question of 
papal supremacy — was ever discussed by the council, at all 
events, publicly. We may recognise the wisdom of 
Eugenius in the evasion of it, and also his sincere desire 
for peace and union. Here, and indeed all along, we 
see in these discussions the peculiar danger of the re- 
conciler. He glides over the thin ice ; but the deep 



268 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

waters lie beneath, and it will not be long before the ice 
breaks. There can be no solid union without a frank 
admission of differences. That was not seen at the time. 
It rarely is seen bj amicable peace-makers. In July 1439, 
after twenty-six sessions of the council, the act of union of 
the Eastern and Western Churches was signed. In August 
it was published in the Duomo at Florence, and the 
Te Deum was sung in Greek. 

It was not long before the futility of all these proceed- 
ings became apparent. The old patriarch had died just 
before the signing, and he was buried in the baptistery at 
Florence ; so he had escaped from the dilemma. But the 
emperor's own brother, Demetrius, refused to sign the act 
of union. Neither Mark of Ephesus nor any of the bishops 
from Georgia would be present at the grand proclamation 
service. When at Venice, on his way home, the bishop of 
Heraclia was required to recite the creed in St. Mark's, he 
did so in the Greek form — without the Filioque clause. 
On returning to the East, John saw to his chagrin that 
all his efforts had been spent in vain. Mark of Ephesus 
led the opposition to union. The patriarchs of Antioch 
and Alexandria refused to sign it. The union was never 
really effected, and from this time the schism went on 
without any hope of healing. 

The failure of the last important attempt to unite the 
Churches was inevitably followed by coolness on the part 
of the Western peoples towards the Greeks and indifference 
to their fate. This fact should be duly weighed when we 
are inclined to charge Europe with supine stupidity and 
heartless selfishness in permitting Constantinople to fall 
into the hands of the Turks. For generations that great 
city had been the bulwark of Europe, the one outstanding 
barrier against the rising tide of Asiatic barbarism, the only 
safeguard of civilisation against savagery, of Christianity 
against Islam. In the inception of the Crusades this 
had been perceived by the wiser men of the West. To 
their credit let it be said, the popes had seen it all along, 
and had consistently shaped their poHcy accordingly. 



GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 269 

Now the failure of the council of Florence finally broke 
the bonds of sympathy between the East and the West 
just when they seemed to be growing into some real 
strength. Constantinople was left to itself ; the con- 
sequence was its doom. 

When the war-cloud was threatening, although all 
hope of real reunion was now over, John's brother, 
Constantine, who had succeeded him, effected a nominal 
union. A united communion was held at St. Sophia 
on December 12, 1452, and the names of the Eastern 
and Western patriarchs were both mentioned in the 
prayers. But the people looked on with amazement and 
horror at the consecration of an unleavened wafer by the 
officiating Latin priest. Eushing out in wild excitement to 
the cell of Gennadius — who had been one of the promoters 
of union at Florence, but who now denounced it — they 
cried, " What occasion have we for succour, or union, 
or Latins ? Far from us be the worship of the Azymites." 
The first minister of the empire was heard to declare that 
he would rather see in Constantinople Mohammed's turban 
than the pope's tiara or a cardinal's hat. 

Under these circumstances the really surprising thing 
is that the city had held out so long. She had never 
recovered from the fatal blow that she had received in 
the conquest and ravages of the Latins. Her final struggle 
is a miracle of patriotic heroism. The end would have 
come much sooner than was the case if it had not 
been for a vast unforeseen movement arising in another 
part of the world. Timour, with his Tartar host, poured 
over the Turkish Empire, threatening to sweep it entirely 
away. Then, while engaged in a Hfe and death struggle, 
the Turks were compelled to relinquish their encroach- 
ments on the Greeks and concentrate their attention 
on their own affairs. When the danger had passed they 
returned to their age-long policy of absorbing the civilisa- 
tion of Eastern Europe. These Turks were of the Ottoman 
stock, directly connected with an earher conqueror, Genghis 
Khan, who had devastated Western Asia, and therefore they 



270 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



must be distinguished from the Seljukian Turks whom the 
Crusaders had found in possession of Asia Minor and Syria. 
Their leader at the final scene was Mohammed ii., a man 
possessing a singular combination of qualities, showing at 
one time the student's thirst for learning and at another 
the most heartless cruelty. 

The scene of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 
the year 1453 is brought vividly before us in Gibbon's 
famous description/ one of the most brilliant passages 
in English literature. But the journal of the besieged 
resident, Nicolo Barbaro, which was not known to Gibbon, 
has enabled Mr. Pears to supplement the great historian 
with many striking details. The vital character of the 
interests at stake and the wide range of the issues involved 
give a tragic grandeur to this event only comparable with 
the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. 

The hero of the siege is Constantine Palseologus, the 
last Eoman emperor, a man worthy to sit on the throne 
of the greatest of his predecessors. By the aid of the 
General Justiniani, a Genoese noble, Constantine was able to 
organise a good defence, and he maintained it with almost 
incredible energy and courage. 

When it became clear that there was no hope of 
deliverance, and that the end was approaching, there was 
no panic. A spirit of religious fervour took possession of 
the citizens. They formed a solemn procession in which 
orthodox Greeks and Catholics of the Eoman communion 
united. All who were not fighting on the walls joined in 
the Kyrie Meison, as they marched through the streets, and 
a great cry of a people in its agony went up to heaven. 
Icons and relics were fetched from the churches and 
conveyed to the places where the defences were weakest, 
in the pathetic hope that where natural means failed 
supernatural power might intervene. Constantine preached 
" the funeral oration of the empire " — to use Gibbon's 
phrase. At length the surging host of invaders broke 
through a weak place and poured into the city. Then, at 

^ Decline and Fall, chap. Ixviii. 



GREEK CHURCH AT FALL OF BYZANTINE EMPIRE 271 



the most critical moment, Justiniani the general was 
wounded. Soon after this final misfortune, seeing that all 
was lost, and refusing to survive his empire, Constantino 
dashed into the thick of the fight and perished amid the 
multitude of the slain. 

Mohammed now gave the city up to plunder ; but he 
ordered the buildings to be spared, reserving them for 
himself. St. Sophia was found to be crowded with fugitives, 
who had shut themselves up in their beloved cathedral, 
vainly expecting a miracle of deliverence to spring from its 
sanctity. They were caught in a trap. The barred door 
soon yielded to the battle-axes of the Turks. The old people 
were killed on the spot ; the young men and women were led 
off in strings of captives for a worse fate. The Latins had 
wantonly hacked to pieces many a work of art ; now the 
Turks destroyed much that they had left. It is a significaat 
fact, however, that, as Critobulus tells us, many books were 
sold at low prices.^ This suggests the hope that scattered 
treasures from the Constantinople libraries may yet be 
found in out of the way parts of the Turkish Empire.^ 

St. Sophia was now converted into a mosque. Moham- 
med called for an imaum, who ascended the pulpit and 
there recited the Mohammedan Creed. Still he did not 
desire the city to be deserted by the Greeks, and he 
invited them back, sanctioned their worship, and ordered 
them to elect a patriarch. Accordingly, a local synod was 
held, and George Scholarius — also known as Gennadius 
— was appointed to the unenviable post. The sultan 
received him at his seraglio and presented him with a 
pastoral cross of silver and gold, saying, Be patriarch and 
be at peace. Count upon our friendship as long as thou 
desirest it, and thou shalt enjoy all the privileges of thy 
predecessors." 

^ Critobulus, xlii. 

^ It would be well if consuls, traders, missionaries, and travellers in 

Turkey would bear this in mind. They may yet discover Papias's 
" Exposition of the Oracles of the God," "The Gospel according to the 
Hebrews," or even Matthew's Logia. 



272 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



This investiture of the patriarch by the sultan is a 
sign that the destruction of the empire was not the destruc- 
tion of the Church. That calamity to the State might 
even have been the salvation of the Church. During the 
first three centuries persecution had proved a wholesome 
discipline preserving the vigour of primitive Christianity. 
With Constantine the Great's patronage of the Church, 
worldliness invaded the whole body and degeneration fol- 
lowed. Now the fatal alhance was severed, and once 
again the Church was set apart from the State and made 
liable to persecution. But she could not recover her 
pristine vigour ; she felt the east wind of adversity to be 
blighting, rather than bracing. 

One of the most serious evils occasioned by the fall of 
Constantinople was the heavy blow that this disaster gave 
to Oriental learning. Many of the Greek scholars fled to 
Europe and there assisted the Eenaissance. But con- 
temporary with the revival of learning in the West was 
its decay in the East. The priesthood sank into insig- 
nificance and lost influence for lack of culture ; preaching 
disappeared ; the Church became intellectually stagnant. 
Still, there were not wanting proofs of fidelity to conscience. 
It has been said that the Church that can produce no 
martyrs is doomed. There have been martyrs in the Greek 
Church under Turkish dominance all down the centuries. 
Treated as rayahs^ as mere cattle, with no civil rights, 
the Christians have always suffered from disabiUties and 
the infliction of unchecked wrongs. Yet they have re- 
mained true to their faith ; and thus their conduct has 
testified continuously to a fidelity for which their brethren 
in the West, who have not had to endure their age-long 
trials, have been too slow to give them credit. 



CHAPTER IX 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 

(a) Greek historians named in earlier chapters. 

(6) Neale, Eastern Church, Introd., and Hymns of the Eastern 
Church, 1876 ; Pitra, Hijmnographie de VEglise Gr^que, 1867 ; 
Brownlie, Hymns of the Holy Eastern Church, 1902 ; Curzon, 
Monasteries of the Levant, new edit., 1897 ; Lecky, History of 
European Morals, vol. ii., 1868 ; Krumbacher, Geschichte der 
Byzantinischen Litteratur von Justinian bis zum Ende des 
Ostromischen Reiches, 1897. 

The organisation of the Greek Church which was com- 
pleted during the patristic period has never since under- 
gone vital modifications in any of the three branches of its 
constitution — its dogma, its ritual, its government — except- 
ing in so far as the last has been affected by political 
influences. The Monophysite and Monothelete controversies 
about the nature and will of Christ were the last serious 
discussions on the creed. Henceforth it became the duty 
of scholars and logicians to defend the settled dogmas of 
the Church, which was deemed to be holy chiefly because 
orthodox. The Western Church still felt free to develop 
truth, and it was the clash of new ideas with conservative 
loyalty to settled doctrine that produced the final and 
irrevocable breach with Eome. Henceforth the Greek 
theologians were to be apologists, but not primarily in the 
region of Christian evidences ; they were more concerned 
with the polemics of heresy within the Church than with 
the war with unbelief outside her borders. Nevertheless, 
the insistent presence of Islam also demanded a defence of 

l8 



274 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the faith against the unbeliever, and called for apologetic 
literature of a more general character. 

Faint echoes of old controversies agitated the Church 
from time to time. In the reign of Manuel Comnenus 
there was a scholastic discussion as to whether Christ pre- 
sented His sacrifice for the sins of the world only to the 
First and Third Persons of the Trinity, or also to the Second, 
the Logos. A synod at Constantinople in the year 1156 
decided for the latter contention, and therefore decreed that 
Christ offered His sacrifice in part to Himself. Ten years 
later a question of the two natures was revived on the 
words of Christ, " My Father is greater than I." To which 
nature did they refer — the Divine or the human ? Heated 
discussions followed, and much excitement was roused 
among aU classes of society. The Emperor Manuel favoured 
the view that the phrase applied to the God-man, to the 
whole incarnate personaUty, and this view was confirmed 
by a synod held in the year 1166. It is mournful to 
note that even with regard to so obscure a question as 
this no freedom of thought was permitted. Those who 
refused to accept the decree of the synod were banished 
and their goods confiscated. But these discussions, though 
very exciting at the time, left no permanent effects on 
the established orthodoxy, and therefore they cannot be 
regarded as landmarks of any importance in the history of 
doctrine. 

Since the Greek Church has not changed materially in 
its doctrine or ritual through all the intervening centuries 
down to our own day, it may be as well to state here once 
for all the principal points of interest concerning the latter 
subject — namely, the ritual. The doctrine has been illus- 
trated in the previous pages. 

The seven sacraments are accepted by the Eastern as 
well as by the Western Church. Baptism continues to be 
observed in the form of immersion. It is administered to 
infants, and at the same time they are anointed on the 
eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and breast. Confirmation, which 
follows immediately, can be administered by presbyters — 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 275 



a difference from the Western canonical arrangement, which 
confines this rite to the bishop. Penance is enacted, but it 
never developed in the East to the elaborate proportions 
and with the mechanical devices which gave rise to the 
sale of indulgences in the West. The priest tells the 
penitent that he is a sinner himsdf, he cannot forgive ; 
only God forgives. Nevertheless he pronounces absolution. 
The Eucharist is treated equally in both churches as the 
most sacred office of religion. Ordination can only be 
conferred by a bishop, and throughout the hierarchy 
the inferior is ordained by his superior. Marriage is a 
sacrament carefully guarded by the Church. The higher 
clergy may not marry after ordination. Bishops may not 
have wives at all, and therefore the episcopate is mainly 
supplied by monks. Presbyters are married before ordina- 
tion and retain their wives for life ; but if one becomes 
a widower he may not take a second wife. Second mar- 
riages among the laity are permitted, or rather condoned, 
but not favoured. Third marriages are forbidden and 
treated as sinful. Unction is practised not so much as 
the viaticum, known as " extreme unction," but for the 
benefit of the sick who may be restored. 

The government of the Church is maintained without 
material alteration in a settled hierarchical form. But 
the pre-eminence of the patriarch of Constantinople becomes 
more pronounced in his own provinces, and less effectual 
elsewhere. This twofold development was wholly due to 
poHtical causes. The weakening of the Byzantine govern- 
ment gave greater scope and wider range to the authority 
of the Church. Next to the accession of a new emperor the 
most important event in Constantinople was the election of 
the patriarch. We now find patriarchs rebuking and even 
defying the throne with a force and a freedom hitherto 
unknown in the East, and more like the spirit of the great 
ecclesiastics of Eome. On the other hand, the absorption 
of Syria and Egypt into the realm of the caHphs and 
sultans made the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and 
Jerusalem prisoners in their own cities, and cut them off to 



276 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



a great extent from intercourse with Constantinople. This 
enforced isolation of the three Eastern patriarchs became 
an important factor in the final severance of the Churches. 

The conduct of worship in the Byzantine Church was 
also continued without serious alteration during this period, 
the ritual becoming more and more stereotyped. This was 
centred in the communion office, which, known as the 
" mass " in the West, is named in the East the " liturgy." ^ 
At first every bishop was free to adopt his own forms of 
prayer, though the liturgy of St. J ames was largely accepted 
as the common basis. In its present form this cannot be 
older than the end of the fourth century, but no doubt it is 
a development from more ancient times. It was primarily 
intended for use in the Church at Jerusalem. Next came 
the liturgy of St. Basil, which is founded on the Uturgy of 
St. James, but is much longer and more elaborate ; and 
after that the liturgy of St. Chrysostom, which is not so 
long. These two together constitute the Byzantine litur- 
gies, the lengthy liturgy of St. Basil being used only on 
certain occasions.^ Originating in Asia Minor this became 
the basis of the Armenian liturgy. The liturgy of St. 
Chrysostom was primarily the form of worship adopted in 
Constantinople, and it became the normal service for the 
Byzantine Church on all Sundays except the few to which 
the liturgy of St. Basil was assigned. 
I The service books of the, Greek Church are in fourteen 

4-^^^^ f quarto volumes. They consist of three parts — hymns, 
' ' poetry, portions of Scripture. No separate Bibles are 

ij^^ published for the use of the people, although the action of 
^'>#^ the British and Foreign Bible Society in circulating the 
V .: gcpiptiires is not hindered by the Greek Church officials as 
^ ; it is by the Eoman Catholic hierarchy, and in some cases it 

^" is welcomed gratefully and encouraged. This Church pro- 

y (k^F divides manuals, vade mecums for services, especially for the 
1 jj^burial service. It looks askance at the Eussian Church 

^ * \eiTovpyla. 

^ Lent (except Palm Sunday), the eve of Epij^liany, Easter, and Christmas, 
9,nd the feast of St. Basil. 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 277 

for its alterations of the old service books and other in- 
novations. 

In the Greek Church the communion service is more 
lengthy, elaborate, and dramatic than the Eoman mass. 
There are prayers and lessons, but every function of the 
service is accompanied by some action. While the Western 
ceremonial appeals to the soul mainly through the ear, the 
Eastern seeks to awaken the interest and chain the 
attention more by its appeal to the eye in richly varied 
symbolical acts performed by the priests and deacons. The 
congregation watches the stir and movement of an elaborate 
moving function. Now the candles are lighted ; now they 
are extinguished ; doors are opened, closed again ; the 
clergy kiss the altar, kiss the gospel, cross the forehead, 
mouth, and breast ; there is the swinging of the censer ; the 
liturgical vestments are frequently changed so that the 
worshipping spectator may have passing before his gaze a 
kaleidoscopic variation of colour — each tint having its 
special symbolism ; processions, genuflections, prostrations, 
all have their part in the great ceremonial. Much of this 
is to be witnessed in a Eoman high mass, but not with the 
volume and variety of symbolism seen in the performance 
of the Greek liturgy. The pomp and ceremony of the 
Church is parallel to the pomp and ceremony of the court 
described with so much unction by the literary Emperor 
Constantine Pogonatus. It agrees with the stiff em- 
broidered and jewelled vestments, the enamelled icons, the 
gold and mosaic decorations of the basilicas in which it is 
the scenic drama of worship. There is no attempt in all 
this to rouse enthusiasm; that can be done by the sermon 
which precedes and prepares for it, when the excitable 
congregation clap and shout and wave their handkerchiefs 
at the eloquent periods of some popular preacher.^ In the 
liturgy, on the other hand, all is decorum. The people 
join in the responses ; they wail the Kyrie Eleison ; they 
make the dome ring again with the mighty chant of the 

^ This was the ancient custom. To-day preaching is rarely heard in the 
Greek Church. 



278 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Trisagion ; but it is all ordered and disciplined, and the de- 
sired result is awe and faith, rather than energy and action. 

Nevertheless, while so much was done to make the 
central facts of Christianity as embodied in the life-story of 
Christ vivid and impressive by means of elaborate appeals 
to the sensuous imagination, it was not here that people 
found satisfaction for their strongest religious appetites. 
Through much of our period preaching was still prominent. 
Bible reading has always been encouraged in the Greek 
Church. People could' go to the churches and read the 
Bibles there for themselves. Unlike the modern Eoman 
service in an unknown tongue, the Greek service was con- 
ducted in Greek, the language of the people. All the 
ancient services were carried on in the languages spoken 
by the congregations engaged in them. In spite of this 
fact the intellectual element was not the most prominent, 
nor did the ideas so skilfully interwoven into the rich 
symbolism of the liturgy really grip the people • who 
watched the ceremonial and took part in the reponses. 
This is proved by what we have seen in the historic 
controversies of the Byzantine age. Eelics were deemed 
more important than ritual, icons than liturgy. To treasure 
a saint's bone or kiss a picture of Christ — this was what 
most concerned the Greek Christian of the Byzantine 
period in the matter of religion. The best teachers of the 
Church deprecated the fetishism of relic worship ; but they 
were powerless to stem the tide of superstition that swept 
over East and West alike. 

After this the stoutest Protestant may regard the 
invocation of the Virgin and saints, and even the worship 
offered to them, as intelligent in comparison with such 
childish superstition. A new mythology sprang up, and 
legends of the saints took the place of pagan myths. Thus 
the martyr Phocas, a gardener at Sinope in Pont us, super- 
seded Castor and Pollux as the sailors' guardian. On 
board ship he had his portion set for him at table and 
then sold, the proceeds being given to the poor as a thank- 
offering for a prosperous voyage. 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 279 

Learning and literature flourished during the Byzantine 
period, though not so as greatly to enrich the libraries of 
bibliophiles in later ages. Like the Benedictine monasteries 
in the West, the Basilian monasteries of the Greek Church 
guarded and transmitted the writings of the great Church 
teachers, the monks diligently copying manuscripts and 
laboriously constructing catenoe of the opinions of the 
Fathers. But while their reading was wide, it was not 
deep ; they were scholarly, but uncritical. They lacked 
imagination, invention, constructiveness. It is a striking 
fact that the stream of ecclesiastical history which flowed 
so copiously through the previous centuries now began 
to run dry, or rather perhaps we should say, was now 
diverted into the main river of political and secular history. 
This is the age of the voluminous Byzantine historians. 
Anybody who attempts to wade through their pages must 
soon be wearied with their unhappy attempts at cumulative 
rhetoric. The style reminds us of popular Victorian prose 
at its worst. There is a constantly recurring effort at pro- 
ducing effects by piling up clauses one upon another- till a 
sentence is sometimes expanded to the extent of a page of 
print. Theophanes is about the last of the writers who 
retain some traces of the literary spirit of Thucydides. He 
gives weight to his narrative by his own contributions of 
political wisdom. But, for the most part, these narratives 
are choked with colourless details — details which neither 
characterise nor vitalise the narrative. They are barren 
of serious reflection, in place of which we have pages of 
flat narrative varied by bursts of adulation or vitu- 
peration. 

After allowing for undeniable defects, we must per- 
ceive that these were not dark ages, nor were they inert 
or infructuous according to their kind. After John of 
Damascus, the last of the Fathers, the next great writer 
and the last of his own calibre is Photius,^ who died in the 
year 891. His chief work is the BiUiotheca^ an encyclo- 
paedia of literature, containing accounts of nearly three 
1 See pages 235, ff. ^ MvpiopL^Xiov. 



280 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



hundred Christian and pagan works together with " elegant 
extracts"; unfortunately a great part of this book has 
been lost. His Nomocanon is the basis of Green canon 
law, the first systematical arrangement of which known 
to us was drawn up by Johannes Scholasticus (John the 
Lawyer), a presbyter at Antioch, who afterwards became 
patriarch of Constantinople (a.d. 565).^ About the year 
1180, Photius*s Nomocanon was commented on by Theodore 
Balsamon, a deacon of Constantinople, as the standard 
collection of canon law for the Eastern Church. Photius 
was a voluminous writer, narrow in view, bitter in tone. 
His works include controversial treatises against the Latins 
and against the Paulicians, and among other books the 
AmphilocMa^ containing answers to more than three 
hundred questions put to him by Amphilochius of Cyzicus. 
With Photius we come to the end of the great Greek 
Church writers whose names are known to fame. But 
the period of the Comnenian dynasty was the Augustan 
age of the Byzantine Empire — in some respects comparable 
to jgf^ age of Queen Anne rather than to our glorious 
Elizabethan period. Then we have that fierce opponent 
and libeller of the Paulicians, Michael Psellus, a man of wide 
culture, and a writer on a variety of subjects, who earned a 
reputation as a teacher of philosophy He died in the year 
1105, leaving, among other books, a work on demonology* 
which contains an invaluable store of information with 
respect to mediaeval notions on a subject then deemed of 
vital importance, and a compendium of universal science 

* This work by John the Lawyer was based on still earlier collections. 
It reduced the sixty heads of canon law in the older writers to fifty, and 
added to the canons of Nicaea, Ancyra, Neo-Csesarea, Gangra, Antioch, 
Ephesus, and Constantinople, already collected and received in the Greek 
Church, the "Apostolical canons," the canons of Sardica, and those con- 
tained in the canonical letter of Basil. When at Constantinople John 
edited an abridgment of his earlier work with the addition of a comparison 
of the imperial rescripts and civil laws (especially the Novels of Justinian) 
under the title Nomocanon. See Smith's Dictionary of Chr. Biog. vol. iii. 
p. 366, col. 2. 

2 'A(U0i\(5xia- ' He was called (pikoad^ujv vTrraTOS. 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 281 



based on theology,^ useful as a cyclopaedia of the knowledge 
of his age. Theophylact, the archbishop of Achrida in 
Bulgaria, was a contemporary of Psellus, who composed a 
commentary in the form of a catena. Euthymius Zigabenus, 
a monk at Constantinople, wrote a reply to the heretics at 
the command of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, a mere 
compilation, though famous in its day. Eustathius, the 
archbishop of Thessalonica, was a commentator on Homer 
and Pindar, but also a Christian theologian and a reformer 
of monasticism. Michael Acominatus, a respected states- 
man at Constantinople, produced a defence of orthodoxy in 
opposition to the heretics, which is deemed an abler and 
more independent work than Euthymius's official book 
written to order. Nicolas of Methone in Messenia com- 
posed a reply to the Neo-Platonist Proclus, in which he 
anticipated Anselm's doctrine of redemption. All these 
writers belong to the same prolific period of late Greek 
literature. The emperor's own daughter Anna has already 
been mentioned. She takes her place among the Byzantine 
historians. 

Coming to the next period, which follows the disorders 
and miseries of the Latin usurpation, we have two centuries 
of less brilliant, but still more or less continuous literary 
activity under the Palseologi (a.d. 1250-1453), chiefly 
occupied with the question of reunion with Western 
Christendom. It is refreshing to discover in the midst 
of this controversy a man who would direct our attention 
away from arid theological and ecclesiastical polemics to 
the eternal verities. This is Nicolas Cabasilas, archbishop 
of Thessalonica, a mystic, who defended his brother mystics 
at Mount Athos when they were charged with heresy, 
and that with a depth of spirituality which throws a 
favourable light on what, when seen among the monks, 
has been regarded as an ignorant superstition. The very 
title of this book is like a gleam of light from heaven in 
a world of very secular ecclesiasticism, for that title is 
Concerning the Life in Christ.^ The mystics are of no age 

^ AiSaffKoXia iravTodair-q. ^ irepl TrjS iv XpiarCo fw^s. 



282 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

or of all the ages. They stand apart from the logical 
development of doctrine and pursue a method of their 
own, which is always essentially the same. Cabasilas was 
a contemporary of John Tauler, for he died in 1354, 
while Tauler died but seven years later (in 1361). These 
two, the former in Greece, the latter in Germany, apparently 
having no connection one with the other, agree in their 
vital principles and join hands with the pseudo-Dionysius 
in the patristic period and with William Law in modern 
times. Like our Western mystics who were forerunners 
of the Eeformation, but more openly and actively so, 
Nicolas Cabasilas was an opposing influence against the 
deadening formalism of the Greek Church. He wrote a 
mystical exposition of the liturgy to bring out its spiritual 
meaning. Other writers of this later period are Demetrius 
Cydonius, a contemporary of Cabasilas, who wrote on " Con- 
tempt of Death " — Simeon of Thessalonica, who comes 
about fifty years later, and whose book on The Faith, The 
Bites, and the Mysteries of the Church is a valuable 
storehouse of ecclesiastical archaeology — Marcus Eugenicus 
of Ephesus, the ablest opponent of the reunion which was 
supposed to have been effected at Florence, who also wrote 
a defence of the doctrine of eternal punishment in answer 
to John VIL, Palseologus, who had objected to it as incon- 
sistent with God's justice and man's frailty — Gennadius, 
afterwards known as George Scholarius, whom we have 
already met,^ forced to be a supporter of the union when 
at Florence, but afterwards its most energetic opponent. 
More popular by far than any of these works was the 
romance of Barlaam and Josaj)hat, a book which was to 
the Middle Ages what the Shepherd of Hermas had been 
to the early Church at Eome, and what Bunyan's Pilgrims 
Progress has become to modern readers. It was their 
favourite religious book, because concrete and dramatic. 
In fact it was the one religious novel of the time. In the 
Latin version of it, this book was even more widely read in 
the West than in its earlier Eastern home. It is found 

1 See page 269. 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 283 

complete or in part in an immense number of manuscripts. 
An uncritical age attributed it to John of Damascus, 
among whose works it appears ; but this tradition can- 
not be maintained. The book was long read as veritable 
history, and accordingly the Eoman Martyrology honours 
its two heroes as saints and assigns the 27th of November 
as their day. But its remarkable resemblance to the 
legendary life of Buddha in the Latita Vistara led to 
its being traced back to that Indian source by Dr. 
Liebrecht.^ Josaphat is the son of the king of " the 
land of the Ethiopians called India," who is kept 
by his father in the royal park and palace in close 
seclusion so that he may see nothing of the evil or misery 
of the world, and especially that he may not come into 
contact with Christianity and monasticism, which his father 
is endeavouring to repress. But he gets leave to ride 
abroad, and then sees a cripple and a blind man, with 
the result that he is greatly depressed and saddened. 
While he is in this state he receives a visit from Barlaam, 
a monk disguised as a merchant, who has been sent to 
India by a Divine vision. The result is Josaphat's con- 
version. When the king learns of this he is much 
distressed, and in order to distract his son's attention 
divides with him the government of his realm, but at 
length he too is led over to Christianity by his son's 
influence. Finally, Josaphat renounces his high position, 
goes on a journey in quest of his spiritual father Barlaam, 
whom after two years of weary wandering at length he 
finds living as a hermit in a cave. He stays with Barlaam 
for the rest of his life, and there the dead bodies of the 
saints are found long after untouched by decay in the 
odour of sanctity. 

It remains for us to notice one other form of litera- 
ture originated in this period, the Greek Christian poetry, 
consisting chiefly of hymns. Much of this has been made 

* See Ebert's Jahrhuch fur r'om. wad engl. Literatur, 1860, ii. pp. 314- 
334 ; cf. St. Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa> Religion, and Max Miiller, on 
"Migration of Fables," Coniem'porary Review, vol. xiv. pp. 572-599. 



284 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

familiar to English readers by the versions of Neale and 
others. We have traces of Christian hymns in the New 
Testament, and Pliny refers to the singing of them in the 
churches of Bithynia at the time of Trajan.^ St. Basil 
refers to a hymn of the martyr Athenogenes, who died in 
the year 169, "Which as he was hurrying on to his per- 
fecting by fire he left as a kind of farewell gift to his 
friends." 2 Hymns and psalms always had their place in 
Christian worship.^ During the fourth century Church 
psalmody was much advanced, first in Syria by Ephraim, 
then at Constantinople by Chrysostom and others, later in 
the West, especially under the influence of Ambrose. There 
is a question whether the Greek hymns of the fourth 
century were metric ; but though that may have been the 
case, there is no doubt that from the eighth century onward 
Greek hymns were simply rhythmic, not metric, and were 
used like the psalms for chanting. Three or more stanzas, 
called troparia,^ constituted an odey three odes a triodeon, 
and three triodia a canon. It was usual for each ode to 
end with a doxa, i.e. a doxology, and a tJieotohion^ which 
was a stanza in honour of Mary as the mother of God. 
These hymns occupy the greater part of the Greek service 
book. Most of them are rubbish ; ^ but among them are 
gems of immortal value. 

The great age of hymn-writers commences with the 
eighth century, and at its head stands John of Damascus, 
who was thought to be inspired by the Virgin Mary, the 
patron of his convent at Mar Saba. His canon for Easter 
Day, known as the " golden canon," sung at midnight on 
Easter Eve, begins with the words, " Christ is risen," to 
which the antiphonal shout is " Christ is risen indeed." 

1 Epist. 97. 

2 De Spiritu Sancto, xxix. 73. This has been identified with two early 
hymns, the A6^a iv x)\pL<xTois [Gloi^ia in excelsis), and the 0ws l\ap6v, still 
used in the Greek daily service. 

* e.g. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 28. 

* TpoTT&ptov, a small rpb-rros or mode. ® Qeorodov. 

^ A "deluge of worthless compositions," Neale, Hymns of the Eastern 
Church, 3rd edit. p. 38. 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 285 



Then we have John's foster-brother and fellow - monk, 
Cosmas of Jerusalem, " the Melodist," whom Neale regards 
as the most learned of the Greek poets. Stephen the 
Sabaite, a nephew of John of Damascus, who spent fifty- 
nine years in the convent of Mar Saba, is the author of 
the Greek composition on which Neale founded his well- 
known English hymn — 

"Art thou weary, art thou languid?" 

Another hymn-writer was Theophanes the historian, known 
as " the Branded," who was mutilated for his devotion to 
the icons and died about A.D. 820. Theodore of Studium 
and his brother Joseph come half a century later (about 
A.D. 890). Lastly, there is Theocristus, in the same 
monastery at Constantinople, the author of "a sup- 
pliant canon to Jesus," which Dr. Neale anglicises in 
the hymn^- — 

"Jesu, name all names above, 

Jesu, best and dearest, 
Jesu, Fount of perfect love, 

Holiest, tenderest, nearest ! 
Jesu, source of grace completest, 
Jesu truest, Jesu sweetest, 

Jesu, well of power Divine, 

Make me, keep me, seal me Thine," etc. 

The Church which could produce such a hymn as that will 
be entirely misjudged if it is only viewed in the light of 
the quarrels of its bishops with heretics and schismatics. 
It was the end of the ninth century, too, that age which 
was the darkest of the Dark Ages in the West, when a 
monk in the great Constantinople monastery poured out 
his soul in one of the hymns of truest adoration and love 
for his Lord ever produced, anticipating similar hymns of 
personal devotion to Christ in the two Bernards at Clair- 
vaux and Cluny. It is in its hymns that we can trace 
the course of a pure stream of genuine spiritual religion 
that is sometimes forced underground when we are 

^ The Greek begins, 'Irja-ov yXvKtJTart, etc. 



286 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



watching the external course of Church history — its angry 
dehates, greedy ambitions, and bitter antipathies. These 
ugly phenomena make up too much of the history of the 
Church ; they are scarcely at all indicative of the history 
of Christianity, the history of spiritual religion. For 
understanding this we are better helped by the stories of 
obscure lives and the breathing of simple souls. The 
hymn-writing continued through the tenth century and on 
into the middle of the eleventh, when it sank into silence. 
It was no time for song when the Turks were pouring over 
the larger part of Eastern Christendom, and the very 
existence of Church and empire were at stake ; nor again 
when the West came to their relief in the dubious garb of 
Crusaders commissioned by the pope of Eome, with whom 
they would have nothing to do. 

During all this time, both in the West and in the East, 
monasticism was cherished as the ideal of the religious 
life and the true monk was regarded as the typical saint. 
Two great monastic centres are now especially conspicuous. 
One of these is the monastery at Studium, made famous 
as the scene of the work of Theodore. Here a very active 
common life was maintained. We have seen how it 
was a centre of opposition to the iconoclastic movement. 
It was the home of a succession of writers of devout 
hymns of the Greek Church. It was also the place where 
the reproduction of literature in the form of beautifully 
written manuscripts was carried on with the greatest 
assiduity guided by the best taste, so that this monastery 
may be regarded as taking the place of a modern uni- 
versity press and school of technology in one of the 
finest and most characteristic arts of the Middle Ages. 

The other great monastic establishment was the collec- 
tion of convents and cells, the many laura, of Mount 
Athos. This mountain, rising to a peak of white marble 
6,350 feet above the sea, is a conspicuous landmark visible 
from the plain of Troy and the slopes of Olympus. It 
gives its name to the peninsular in the ^gean Sea of 
which it is the southernmost point ; but it is known in the 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 287 



East as The Holy Mountain ^ on account of its collection of 
religious houses. Curzon counted 935 places of worship, in- 
cluding churches, chapels, and oratories, every large convent 
containing from six to twenty chapels, the walls of which 
are covered from top to bottom with frescoes.^ The family 
of the Comneni (a.d. 1058—1204) bestowed special privi- 
leges on the monks of Mount Athos. Persecuted and 
pillaged under the Latin dominance, they appealed to Pope 
Innocent in. for protection and were favourably regarded 
by him. With the recovery of Constantinople by the 
Palaeologi their prosperity returned. Several emperors 
retired here from the cares of the world. The shrines 
richly decorated with goldsmith work of a high order, the 
libraries with their fine illuminated manuscripts, the 
splendid frescoes, reckoned among the finest specimens of 
Byzantine art, and the natural advantages of its retreats 
among rocks and ravines and woody slopes, with glimpses 
out to the sunny sea, combined to render Mount Athos the 
choicest spot in Eastern Christendom. The monks were 
wise in making timely submission to the Turks, with the 
result that, though they had suffered from earher Saracen 
raids and though they had been very cruelly treated by 
their fellow-Christians from the West, when Constantinople 
was taken by Mohammed and the rest of the Eastern 
Church came under the Turkish yoke, Mount Athos was 
allowed virtual independence subject to a tribute — a. unique 
privilege which it has maintained down to the present 
day. 

But it is neither its lovely situation, its size, its 
numerous population of monks, its many sacred buildings, 
its treasures of art and literature, nor its home rule that 
have given Mount Athos its high honour in the Greek 
Church. That is due to the renowned sanctity of its 
monks, and especially to one peculiar characteristic which 
may be deemed either a sign of the highest spirituality 
or a mark of the grossest, most ignorant superstition. 
Intluenced by the mysticism of the pseudo-Dionysius, and 

^"A7ioi' 6pos. ^ Monasteries of the Levant, p. 18. 



288 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



following the example of Simeon, an abbot of a Con- 
stantinople monastery, the monk of Mount Athos practised 
the self-hypnotism of an Indian fakir. Sitting in a corner 
of his cell, pressing his chin firmly into his breast, fixing 
his eyes on his navel, and holding his breath as long as 
possible, till his vision became dim, the devotee passed 
through a condition of profound depression of spirit into 
an ecstasy in which he saw himself surrounded by a halo 
of light, the light of God that shone around Christ at the 
Transfiguration. A rapture of what he took to be un- 
earthly joy seized him, and he felt himself brought into 
the very presence of God by his experience of the beatific 
vision. His cell, his monastery, his companion monks, the 
world, his own personality, vanished from his conscious- 
ness, and he sat enthralled, without thought, or wish, 
or movement, entirely occupied with his supernatural 
experience. 

The quietness and passivity, the entire emptying of the 
mind of all thought, and the exclusion of all sensations, which 
were the condition of the trance, led those who indulged 
in it to be called " Hesychasts." ^ Accordingly the con- 
troversy to which they gave rise has been designated the 
Hesychast controversy. This was originated by Barlaam, 
who had been the ambassador of Andronicus ill. to the 
pope at Avignon on the question of the reunion of the 
Churches. No sooner was this man back at Constantinople 
than he accused the monks of Mount Athos of the heresy 
of Ditheism — scornfully describing them as " navel souls." ^ 
Gregory Palamas, afterwards archbishop of Thessalonica, 
defended them. For doing so he was included in Barlaam's 
accusations. A council was held on the subject at Con- 
stantinople in the year 1341, when the unpopularity of 
Barlaam's negotiation for the union came to the aid of 
the Mount Athos monks. The council gave its sanction 
to the doctrine of the uncreated light, connecting it with 
a Divine energy,^ which was to be distinguished from the 
essence * of God. The accuser would have been condemned 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 289 

if he had not recanted, after which he withdrew to Italy 
and joined the Latin Church. But this did not end the 
controversy, which was taken up by Barlaam's admirer 
Gregory Acnidynus and Nicephorus the historian. Two 
more synods were held on the subject — the last in a.d. 
1351, and these both followed the example of the earlier 
synod and declared in favour of the monks. Thus the 
idea of the uncreated light was repeatedly pronounced to 
be orthodox by the Greek Church. 

It is difficult for a Western, and especially an Anglo- 
Saxon Protestant, mind not to feel contempt and disgust 
for what appears to be a gross and degrading superstition. 
And yet when we remember the trances of the prophets 
— especially of Ezekiel — and take note of the curious 
phenomena brought to light by recent experimental psy- 
chology, we may be led to suspend our judgment and 
allow the possibility that to some, if not all, who went 
through the abnormal experience, it may have been the 
condition of realising genuine spiritual communion, by 
means of its complete mastery of the distractions that 
come from the world of sense. Therefore, although itself 
apparently so completely materialistic, after all it may 
not have been so very alien to that internal light preached 
by George Fox, which his followers regard as the secret and 
source of their deepest religious life. 

When we turn from the monks to the main body of 
the Church, and ask. What was its religious and moral con- 
dition during these later centuries of the Byzantine era ? 
we are faced with a tantalising question which it is always 
difficult to answer. For most historians confine their 
attention to large movements and prominent personages. 
Suetonius's gossip of court scandal at Eome under the 
Caesars does not give us any idea of the habits of the 
farmers on the plains of Italy, nor does Juvenal's satire 
on the fashionable society of his day teach us anything 
about the behaviour of the respectable citizens of the 
country towns. Still less do the Byzantine chroniclers 
throw hght on the conduct and character of the subjects 
19 



290 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

ruled by the Comneni and the Palaeologi. Nevertheless, 
now and then we have hints of the existence of a public 
conscience reflecting the private morals of the people. 
Finlay repeatedly asserts his opinion that a high standard 
of morality was maintained in the Greek Empire at this 
time, and that morally as well as intellectually the Eastern 
Church was now much superior to the Western. We have 
seen that these were by no means dark ages in regard 
to culture, scholarship, and art. They were centuries of 
luxurious life and refinement, contrasting strongly with 
the ignorant barbarism of the barons who conducted the 
Crusades. The disapproval of second marriages and the 
grave condemnation of third marriages indicate some strict- 
ness in the public conscience which a fortiori would repro- 
bate more serious offences in the relation of the sexes. But 
even Einlay admits the degradation of morals in the eleventh 
century under the unscrupulous Empress Zoe. The patri- 
arch Alexius declined to celebrate the third marriage of 
this empress, although he had performed the ceremony 
when she married her second husband — a court servant 
well known to be her accepted lover — the very night 
of the death of her first husband. The third husband 
was the dissolute Constantine ix., who had had two wives. 
Yet the patriarch crowned the new emperor with the usual 
Church ceremonies the day after his marriage. 

In reading the history of these centuries, we are 
horrified at the frequent cases of mutilation of their rivals 
and victims perpetrated by the emperors. Blinding was quite 
the rule when a dangerous person was so unfortunate as to 
fall into the hands of his enemy. A young prince would 
be suddenly torn away from all the splendour and luxury 
of the court, and flung into a dungeon, there to languish 
for decades. The operation of blinding was carried out 
with cold-blooded, scientific skill. It was deemed an act 
of humanity and refinement when, in place of the brutal 
act of gouging out the eyes, a copper globe was held in 
front of them reflecting and concentrating the sun's rays 
so as to ruin the sight without actually destroying the 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH 291 



organs themselves. This shows that the purpose of the 
cruel punishment was not mere torture or the savage 
revenge of mutilation for its own sake. Perhaps we 
should say that the precise purpose of this common ex- 
pedient of blinding was not so much to incapacitate the 
victim physically, as to render it improbable that people 
should wish to restore him to a position of power, that is 
to say, to incapacitate him in the eyes of the public." ^ It 
is true that the blind Dandolo was the leader of the Latin 
expedition against Constantinople ; but he was a man of 
known ability and trusted integrity, loyal to Venice, with 
none of the self-seeking that actuated most of the barons. 

^ A suggestion made by Prof. Gwatkin in conversation with the present 
writer. 



PART II 

THE SEPARATE CHURCHES 

The idea of a catholicity so wide and generous, or, as some 
would prefer to regard it, a comprehensiveness so lax and 
latitudinarian, as to contain a number of churches differing 
in doctrine, discipline, and ritual, which many people 
cherish in the present day, was scarcely conceived before 
modern times ; it was not contemplated by any of the 
ancient churches, each of which anathematised all Christians 
outside its pale. Justin Martyr's application of the Stoic 
doctrine of the Logos spermaticos to Christianity might have 
introduced an anticipation of such an idea, and the large 
liberahsm of Clement of Alexandria might even have wel- 
comed it, had it appeared above the horizon. But Cyprian's 
close Catholicism was much more to the mind of the patristic 
Church, and the mediaeval Church had no wider outlook. 

In point of fact, however, there was a division of 
Christendom into separate churches quite early, and that 
division has never been healed. The causes of it were 
twofold — partly racial and political, and partly doctrinal 
and polemical. The spread of Christianity beyond the 
confines of the Eoman Empire led to the establishment of 
churches in foreign kingdoms. At first these churches 
were regarded as integral parts of the one Catholic Church, 
and their bishops had a right to attend oecumenical councils. 
But several influences tended to cut them off. The mere 
fact of distance, difficulties of travel, and troubles in cross- 
ing the frontiers — especially in times of war — tended more 
and more to separate them. Then in their isolation they 
developed their several types of racial individuality, together 

292 



THE SEPARATE CHURCHES 



293 



with a growing antipathy to the habits of churches of 
other races. The adoption of Christianity by Constantino, 
followed by the close alliance of Church and State, or 
rather dominance of the Church by the State, had as its 
natural consequence a tendency to limit the Church 
which deemed itself Catholic to the confines of the Eoman 
Empire. By an inevitable reaction the patriotism of local 
churches in other countries would tend to develop their 
individuality. This process was hindered by persecution, 
which led foreign Christians ill-treated by their own 
government to look to the friendly Eoman Empire for 
protection. Still, it could not be ultimately frustrated. 

The second cause of separation — the doctrinal and 
polemical — was much more thorough and effectual. As 
early as the second century there had been heretical bodies, 
such as the Montanists and the Marcionites, existing as 
regularly organised churches ; and a little later orthodox 
but schismatic communions, such as the Novatians and 
the Donatists, each regarding itself as the one true 
Church. The Christological controversies had more serious 
and permanent consequences, because here national and 
racial influences combined with the doctrinal to aggravate 
and perpetuate the severance. In this way Monophysites 
became Coptic and Syrian Churches, and Nestorians shaped 
into Churches of Persia, Chaldsea, and other Eastern parts. 
The Mohammedan conquests tended to confirm these divi- 
sions. They made communication between the Christians 
within their dominions and the Church of the empire 
difScult and precarious. But that was not all. Under the 
tolerant caliphs the territory of Islam became a harbour of 
refuge for Christians angrily denounced and driven from 
pillar to post by the holy orthodox Church of the empire. 
The scornful Arab made no difference between the various 
schools of " infidels " whom he tolerated. Thus churches 
excommunicated as heretical by the Greek and Eoman 
authorities remained in safety out of the clutches of the 
tyrannical emperors and ecclesiastics, who would have 
harried them if they had had a chance to do so. Mean- 



294 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



while, persecution, whether actual or only held over as a 
threat, became the most effectual barrier to reunion. 

We have had abundant opportunities of observing how 
ecclesiastical, political, and doctrinal causes led to the total 
and final severance of the two great sections of the original 
Catholic Church. These we have seen in the clash of the 
rival claims of Kome and Constantinople ; in the assump- 
tion of universal headship of the Church by the papacy, 
denied and repudiated in the East ; in the crowning 
of Charles the Great by Leo iii., and the consequent 
severance of the Latin Church from the remnant of the 
Eoman Empire which was identified with the Eastern 
Church ; and lastly, in bitterly contested doctrinal differ- 
ences, especially that connected with the Filioque clause 
added by the Western theologians to the Nicene Creed, and 
the miserable quarrel over the question of the use of 
unleavened bread in the communion, which seemed to 
outweigh all other occasions of conflict in the minds of the 
people of Constantinople. 

Thus we have reached the stage when it will be no 
longer possible to carry on one continuous story of Church 
history. It will now be necessary to trace the history of 
each of the separate churches. In order to do this 
effectually we must go back to their origins, in the cases 
where these origins have not been considered already, and 
study them along the lines of their own distinctive courses 
of development. 



DIVISION I 



EAELY CHEISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 

(a) Eusebius ; Socrates ; Sozomen ; Theodoret ; Philostorgius ; 

Aphr aates, Homilies ; Auxentius ; Jornandis, Roma et Getica 
(edited by Mommsen), 1882. 

(b) Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, Book iv. chap. iii. ; Neale, 

Patriarchate of Antioch, pp. 40, 74-78, 114-133, 146-150 ; 
Duchesne, Les Missions Chretiens au sud de I'empire Bomain, 
1896 ; C. A. Scott, UlfHas, the Apostle of the Goths, 1885 ; 
Bessell, Ueher das Lehen des Ulfilas, etc., 1860. 

Befoee proceeding to sketch in brief outline the continuous 
story of the various Eastern Churches down the ages till 
our own day, it may be well to revert to the earliest period 
of the spread of Christianity in the outer world, and gather 
up the chief events in connection with the origin and growth 
of primitive churches beyond the confines of the Roman 
Empire. Much of this is shrouded in the mists of legend ; 
but even that fact comes into history because the mere 
existence of the legends is significant, as an indication of 
the condition of the contemporary districts to which they 
refer. If we come upon the story of the conversion of any 
place, we may be sure that Christianity was well established 
there at least by the time when that story was afloat, 
however fantastic it may be in itself. While we cannot 
accept the alleged correspondence between J esus Christ and 
King Abgar recorded by Eusebius,^ or place any reliance on 
his account of the labours of Thomas and Thaddaeus, the 
flourishing condition of Christianity in Edessa in the second 
century, when Tatian produced his Harmony for the use of 

» ffisL Eccl. i. 13. 



29 S THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the Church in that Syrian metropolis, points to a very 
early extension of Christianity in the East. Barsedanes 
the Gnostic, whom Hippolytus called an " Armenian," ^ 
came from this place, which became an important centre 
not only for Syrian Christianity, but for missionary activity 
and the spread of the gospel into Persia and Armenia 
The large province known as Armenia Magna — east of 
Armenia Minor — which had been included in the Eoman 
Empire when at its greatest extent, was lost to the empire 
during our period ; and therefore its Christian inhabitants 
were more or less cut off from their brethren in the main 
body of the Church, while they were subjects of Parthian, 
Persian, or Saracen rulers. This territory had been recog- 
nised as a Christian country as early as the fourth century.^ 
It is Origen who tells us that Thomas " received 
Parthia as his allotted region," and that " Andrew received 
Scythia," ^ a statement which implies that the extension of 
Christianity into these two districts, the one directly east 
of Syria, the other consisting of little known regions 
indefinitely located at the north of the Euxine, was at least 
some time earlier than the third century, or no such tradi- 
tions could have been then current. That points to a 
second century extension of Christianity beyond the con- 
fines of the empire in two directions. Then we have the 
famous journey of Pantsenus, who resigned his professorial 
chair and the cultured society of Alexandria about A.D. 180 
to go as a missionary to some far-off land known as " India," 
probably South Arabia, which was never conquered by the 
Eomans, or, as Harnack suggests, "even the Axumitric 
kingdom," * i.e. Abyssinia. There, as it was reported,^ he 
already found a Christian Church, the origin of which was 
attributed to Bartholomew, using a Hebrew version of 
St. Matthew, that is to say, the " Gospel according to 

^ Ref'tUa. vii. 19. ^ See Sozomen, ii. 8. 

^ Eusebius, Hist. Ecd. iii. 1. 

^ Ibid. V. 10; see Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, Eng. trans., 
vol. ii. p. 299. 

^ Observe Eusebius's cautious phrase, " He is said to have found there," 
etc., Hist. Ecd. v. 10. 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 297 



the Hebrews." This then would be a Jewish Christian 
Church. The " Acts of Thomas " shows that Christianity had 
reached the north-western part of India itself, our modern 
India, as early as the third century. By the time of the 
council of Nicsea there were churches in Arabia east of the 
Dead Sea, a region over which the empire had very little 
control. The gospel was carried up the Nile to the towns and 
villages of Egypt at an early time, and thence it penetrated 
the Soudan — "Ethiopia," the south country beyond Philae — 
in the fourth century, till perhaps it reached the mission 
in Abyssinia, which had entered Africa from the east. 

When we pass over to the fourth century the accounts 
of foreign missions and the experiences of the churches in 
the outlying regions round about the empire become more 
definite and explicit. The Armenian Church, with the 
itory of its famous apostle Gregory the Illuminator ; the 
Ethiopian and Abyssinian Church, the origin of which is 
traced to the labours of two shipwrecked young travellers, 
Erumentius and ^desius ; the Georgian Church, springing 
from the influence of a woman — the Armenian slave girl 
Nunia ; the Syrian Church in India, which claims St. Thomas 
as its founder — all of them independent churches in regions 
outside the Eoman Empire — will claim our attention later 
on ; because as they have remained in independent existence 
on to our own day we shall want to know something about 
the course of their history right down the centuries. But 
incidents in connection with two outlying communities 
of Christians lead the interest connected with them to 
be concentrated for us in the early period, and therefore 
seem to demand our consideration at once. These incidents 
are the persecution of the Persian Christians and the 
mission of Ulfilas among the Goths. 

1. The origin of Christianity in Persia is hidden in 
obscurity ; but, as we have seen, in all probability it was 
an offshoot of the activity of the Syrian Church at Edessa, 
which in turn must be traced back to Antioch, the earliest 
great missionary church. In the district of Garamaea, east 
of the Tigris, and south-east of Mosul, there appear to 



298 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



have been Christians as early as A.D 170.^ This was then 
part of the Parthian Empire, made famous in history by 
the brilliant career of the great Queen Zenobia, which was 
superseded by the new Persian Empire, known as the 
Sassanid kingdom, in the year 227. Zenobia had shown 
Christian sympathies — of a sort. When in possession of 
Antioch she had petted and protected the gorgeous heretic 
Paul of Samosata ; but then he had been condemned by 
the Christians of the Eoman Empire, through whom 
perhaps she thought to spite Eome. By protecting and 
patronising heretical Christians she gained the enthusiastic 
support of one section of her . subjects. It was the very 
opposite with the Persians when they founded an empire 
on the ruins of Zenobia's splendid dominion. They were 
equally inimical to Eome ; but by this time Paul and his 
faction had passed away. Besides, the Persian Empire did 
not include Syria. The Christians in Persia were in 
communion with their brethren in the Eoman Empire. 
This fact roused suspicion of disloyalty in the minds of 
their masters. It was feared that they were disaffected 
subjects, spies in communication with the terrible enemy 
in the West, perhaps conspirators plotting for the downfall 
of the Sassanid throne. The adoption of Christianity by 
Constantine and the growing combination of Church and 
State that followed, immensely aggravated this suspicion. 
In the Eoman Empire the Church was now treated as a 
State department. Therefore, for subjects of Persia to be 
communicating with the Church at Constantinople would 
appear to be much the same as for English Eoman Catholics 
in the times of Elizabeth and the Stuarts to be in com- 
munication with fellow-Eomanists in Spain and France. 
Whatever may have been their real sentiments before the 
persecution broke out, there can be no doubt that when it 
was raging the Persian Christians would look with longing 
eyes to their brethren safely sheltered within the Eoman 
Empire. 

^ Moeller, Hist, of Christian Church, Eng. trans., vol. i. p. 104, gives 
authorities for this statement, drawn from the Syrian Acts of Persian martyrs. 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 299 



There was another factor in this persecution which 
added fuel to the fire, or which perhaps had kindled the 
fire at the first. This was the antagonism of the Magi. 
That the leaders of so enlightened a religion as that of 
Persia should have stirred up a persecution of the Christians 
is a plain proof of their vitality and vigour. In earlier 
days a similar influence had roused violent opposition to 
Christianity in the Eoman Empire. Thus the Valerian 
persecution was instigated by a famous magician, Macrianus. 
We must not confound the ancient order of Persian Magi 
with the vulgar charlatans who professed magic in the 
Western world. And yet the science of the Magi itself 
was fast degenerating into magic, a practice against which 
the Church waged deadly war, accusing it of alliance 
with the devil. 

The great Persian persecution of the Christians broke 
out under Sapor, whose reign was extended to the extra- 
ordinary length of seventy years. His father had died 
before his birth, and since the crown was then placed on 
the spot that was supposed to conceal the future heir, the 
years of his reign are reckoned from a time earUer than 
his appearance in the world. The Magi began to work on 
Sapor's mind when he was a youth, and there were many 
violent deaths of Christians in consequence during the 
early part of his reign. The first of them are dated two 
years after the council of Mcaea (a.d. 327). But these 
cases are scarcely noticed in comparison with the army of 
martyrs that fell in Sapor's thirtieth year (a.d. 343) and 
during the succeeding thirty- five years, over the whole of 
which the persecution was spread intermittently. The 
diptychs of the Persian Church celebrate the names of 
16,000 clergy, monks, and nuns. We have no means of 
estimating the number of the laity who suffered. At first 
there were many apostasies. But the wonder of the 
persecution is that as this proceeded down its path of 
blood through many years, instead of wearing out the 
patience of the Church, it welded her metal to the temper 
of fine steel. According to the confession of the acts of 



300 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the martyrs the religious character of the Christians was 
low at first, but as in the case of the two great Eoman 
persecutions — the Decian and the Diocletian — the fires of 
tribulation purged the Church. 

The immediate motive of this especially severe per- 
secution at the exact time when it broke out appears to 
have been political. The Magi had been urging the king 
to suppress their rivals all along. But now Sapor saw the 
Christian bishop James at Nisibis keeping that city firm 
in its allegiance to the Eoman Emperor Constantius, so 
that it successfully withstood two sieges by the Persians. 
This was a clear case of action on the part of the Church in 
favour of Eome against Persia, although not within his own 
territory. It was enough to embitter him against those of 
J ames's friends and co-religionists whom he had in his power. 

The persecution began with a heavy capitation tax on 
the Christians. Their bishop Symeon proved himself to 
be a very haughty passive-resister. " Christ," he answered, 
" who had freed His Church by His death would not 
permit His people to bow to such a yoke." Like the 
young officer Marcellus who had spoken to his superiors 
scornfully about "your emperors," during the Diocletian 
persecution, because his sovereign was Christ, and like the 
" fifth monarchy men " in the seventeenth century, Symeon 
seemed to think that his status as a Christian involved 
escape from the authority of the civil government ; or if 
he did not go so far as that, he took it as a full justification 
for refusing to pay an iniquitous tax. He was arrested, 
tried, urged in vain to worship the sun, and condemned 
to perish in torture. At the same time other martyrs 
were beheaded. The very day of Symeon's martyrdom a 
fresh and more severe edict was issued against the Christians. 
It only stimulated the heroism of the martyrs. Sapor's 
queen being attacked by an unknown disease, the Jewish 
physician who attended her attributed it to the practice of 
witchcraft by two Christian ladies of high station. They 
were stripped, tied to posts, and hacked to pieces, and then 
the queen was led through the yet reeking portions of 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 301 



their remains. The stories of the persecution, its horrors 
and its heroism, are too numerous to repeat. A glance 
over them reveals the fact that a great number of the 
martyrdoms occurred in the district of Adiabene, which 
appears to have been almost wholly Christian. But 
multitudes fell in all the provinces. At first only the 
clergy were aimed at ; nevertheless the persecution was 
not confined to the official leaders of the Church. 

When we next meet with Persian Christians we find 
them adopting Nestorianism ; and the later fortunes of 
Christianity in Persia will be considered in the division 
of this volume dealing with the Nestorians. 

2. The other series of events occurring beyond the 
borders of the Eoman Empire during the earlier period of our 
history that now claims our attention is found in connection 
with the story of Ulfilas and the conversion of the Goths.^ 
These people of our own Teutonic stock, whose repeated 
invasions were among the most serious troubles of the 
Eoman emperors, first meet us in the lands north of the 
lower Danube during the third century of the Christian 
era. Their traditional earlier connection with Scandinavia 
has not been verified; but the fact that in the restless 
migrations of their teeming populations they had swept east- 
ward from the ancient forests of Germany, and thus early 
begun the characteristic colonising habit of which their Eng- 
lish representatives, the Jutes, gave evidence, is the probable 
explanation of their appearance in Eastern Europe, wedged 
in between the Sclavs on the north and the Greeks on the 
south. Still pressing onward, during the course of the 
fourth century they poured into the Koman province of 
Dacia in repeated and disastrous raids, the first of which 
occurred in the year 238, ravaging Moesia in the reign 
of Philip the Arabian, and later defeating the Emperor 
Decius, who fell while fighting them (A-D. 251).^ Thus 
indirectly they saved the Church by putting an end to 

* Formerly but erroneously identified with the Getae. 
■ 2 Zosimus, i. 19 fF. 



302 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the first persecution that was systematically planned by a 
determined emperor to effect its total destruction. During 
the next seventeen years they devastated Eastern Europe 
and Western Asia by land and sea as far as Trebizond ; 
but at length they were defeated and driven back by the 
Emperor Claudius (a.d. 269), just about the time when the 
elder Theodosius was repulsing the Saxons in Britain. A 
wise compromise was now agreed upon. The Eomans 
ceded the province of Dacia, north of the Danube, which 
Trajan had added to the empire, so that the river became 
the boundary between Eoman and Goth, while the name 
Dacia was preserved by being transferred to the district 
south of the Danube (a.d. 274). The political sagacity of 
this arrangement was seen in the ensuing peace of ninety 
years' duration, only once seriously broken by an incursion 
of Alaric, which was successfully repelled after its brief, 
brilliant success. Under Ermanaric, in the fourth century, 
the Goths north of the Danube grew into a great power, 
conquering the Sclavs, and, according to their own 
historian Jornandis — who is not altogether reliable — 
extending their dominion as far as the Baltic.^ Ermanaric 
was only a kind of overlord, for the Goths had no kings, 
and therefore when Socrates^ describes a civil war as 
a contest between two rivals — Athanaric and Frithigern — 
for the sovereignty, we must understand this as a quarrel 
between two separate chieftains for the place of primus 
inter pares.^ But the important fact in regard to the 
history of Christianity among the Goths is that these two 
chieftains followed opposite lines of policy both in relation 
to the Eoman Empire and with reference to Christianity. 
The close neighbourhood of the two powers led to inter- 
communication and interaction. Athanaric took the side 
of a usurper in making war on the emperor, but afterwards 
came to terms with Valens. Christianity had already 

1 Jornandis, 23. ^ ^^-^^^ ;Ecd. iv. 33. 

* Ammianus calls Atlianaric a "judge," Hist, xxvii. 5. According 
to Freeman, he would be the equivalent of an Anglo-Saxon ealdorman or 
herctoga. See Freeman's article "Goths " in Encycl. Brit. 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 303 



penetrated into his dominions, and he had persecuted the 
converts severely. On the other hand, Frithigern had 
found it pohtic to cultivate the friendship of the empire, 
and therefore to be himself friendly to its religion, the type 
of which, we must remember, was Arianism, then favoured 
by the government.^ 

The actual beginnings of Christianity among the Goths 
cannot be traced. A twofold process was at work leading 
to the introduction of the gospel to the Teutonic tribes 
beyond the Danube. In the first place, Christian captives 
carried off in the Gothic raids of the empire brought their 
religion with them ; and, inasmuch as every genuine 
Christian is bound to be a missionary, we are not sur- 
prised to learn that some of these captives made the 
gospel known among the heathen people with whom their 
lot was now cast.^ In the second place, Goths served 
in the Eoman army and there came under Christian 
influences, so that those who were converted, when they 
went back to their own country, would go as Christians 
ready to spread the new faith among their people. To 
these influences we must add that of fugitives from per- 
secution in the empire, who took refuge among the more 
liberal " barbarians." 

The earliest Gothic colony within the empire appears 
to have established itself at Crim — the Crimea — long 
before the Arian supremacy, to have become Christian of 
the Catholic type, and to have remained such throughout. 
There was a bishop of the Goths named Theophilus at the 
council of Nicsea (a.d. 325).^ According to Philostorgius, 
raids as early as the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus had 
resulted in Christian captives planting the gospel among 
the Goths ; among these captives, he says, were the 
ancestors of Ulfilas.* 

1 Sozomen, vi. 37 ; Socrates, iv. 33. ^ Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. ii. 6. 

' Socrates, ii. 41. 

* Philostorgius, ii. 5. Athanasius, writing before the council of Nicaea, 
mentions both Scythians and Goths among barbarians who had received the 
gospel. Qi. Cyril, Cat. xvi. 22. 



304 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



We may therefore be certain that this famous man 
was not the first to introduce Christianity to a Teutonic 
race. Nevertheless, it is with justice that Ulfilas has 
been described as " the Apostle of the Goths," because it 
was owing to his labours that a great part of the nation 
was won over to the faith of Christ. The discovery of a 
Gothic account of his life by one of his own disciples has 
enabled scholars to supplement and correct the prejudiced 
narratives of the Greek Church historians from a more 
authentic source.^ There are reasons for doubting Philo- 
storgius's statement that Ulfilas was a descendant of one of 
the Cappadocian captives.^ His name is thoroughly Gothic, 
and his pupil Auxentius does not hint at a foreign 
parentage. He was born among the Goths in the year 
311. We cannot test the statement of Socrates that he 
was converted by Theophilus, the bishop who attended the 
council of Nicsea. If that were correct, he would have 
been orthodox at first. But afterwards he was identified 
with one of the schools of Arianism. While quite young, 
probably in the year 332, when he was twenty-one years 
of age, he was sent to Constantinople, either as an envoy, 
or, as seems more likely considering his youth, as a 
hostage. Arianism was now dominant in the city, and 
naturally enough Ulfilas came under its influence. While 
at Constantinople he learnt Latin and Greek, and served 
in the minor order of a reader in the Church, probably 
working in the city as an evangelist to his fellow-countrymen 

^ See C. Anderson Scott, Ulfilas, the Apostle of the Goths, a book which 
is mainly founded on a Gothic MS. at the Louvre, discovered by Waitz 
in the year 1840, containing the life of Ulfilas by Auxentius, one of his 
■pupils, and Arian bishop of Dorostorus (Silistria). 

2 Prof. Anderson Scott adduces three reasons — (1) Philostorgius, though 
himself a Cappadocian, writing forty years later, was less likely to know 
the origin of Ulfilas than people at Constantinople [surely a doubtful state- 
ment] ; (2) since the Ostrogoths of the Crimea were the Gothic people 
who made raids on Cappadocia, it is improbable that a Cappadocian captive 
would be found among Goths of the Danube ; (3) it is also improbable 
that young descendants in the third generation of captive from the empire 
would be sent to represent the Goths at Constantinople {JJlfiias^ etc., pp. 
50, 51). 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 305 

among the imperial troops. In the year 341 he was 
ordained as a missionary by the Semi-Arian party and sent 
back to his own country to evangehse it. This fact throws 
an interesting sidelight on the period of fierce controversy 
which follows the council of Nicsea. As we read the 
Church histories we are in danger of regarding it as a 
time when religion was nothing but a battleground of 
angry polemics between the factions into which the Church 
was broken up. But this mission of Ulfilas is a sign that 
something better was to be seen in it, though that did not 
make so much noise. It is interesting also to observe 
that the missionary zeal was found among the Arians, 
whom the Nicene party were for ever denouncing and 
anathematising as impious infidels. 

Ulfilas was thirty years of age when he set out on his 
great enterprise, and he continued in it for forty years of 
arduous toil, amid great perils and persecutions. He 
began among the Visigoths beyond the Danube, where he 
laboured for seven years with great success. He won so 
many converts that the pagan chief, who appears to have 
been wrongly identified with Athanaric, was roused to 
anger and commenced a persecution of his Christian 
people. Ulfilas then obtained permission from Constantius 
to retire with his converts across the Danube into Moesia, 
within the confines of the empire, settling near the foot 
of the mountain range of Hsemus. In the year 360 he 
attended a council at Constantinople, called together by 
the Homoean party. It was the creed of this party to 
which he gave his assent — a creed, it will be remembered, 
devised for political reasons, in order to retain Arianism 
within the Church. It aimed at so doing by putting an 
end to controversy, by excluding all party watchwords — 
homoousios, homoiousios, and the rest, and affirming a 
simple likeness between the First and Second Persons in 
the Trinity. 

There is no reason to doubt that Ulfilas was perfectly 
honest in the theological position he occupied. As an 
earnest missionary, more concerned with practical evan- 

20 



306 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



gelistic work than with theological controvery, he may 
have been thankful for a simple form of Christianity that 
he could make intelligible to his rough fellow-countrymen 
more easily than one which was involved in subtle Greek 
metaphysics. There is no ground for the malignant 
insinuation of orthodox Church writers, that Ulfilas adopted 
Arianism in a bargain with the Emperor Valens when seek- 
ing protection from the persecution of the pagan Goths. 
He states in his will that he had always held the same 
principles.^ The probability is that the Goths were already 
Arians of the mild, non-metaphysical type. Arianism was 
strong in Moesia and along the line of the Danube, and the 
natural explanation of the facts is that Ulfilas and his 
people were simply carried with the current of their times 
and became Arian without ever supposing that they were 
adopting a specifically heretical position. 

The result, however, was curiously complicated. In 
the first place, it was a great thing for Europe that when 
the Goths poured over Italy and even captured Eome they 
came as a Christian people, reverencing and sparing the 
churches, and abstaining from those barbarities that 
accompanied the invasion of Britain by the heathen 
Saxons. But, in the second place, many of these simple 
Gothic Christians learned to their surprise that they w^ere 
heretics, and that only when their efforts towards frater- 
nising with their fellow- Christians in the orthodox Church 
were angrily resented. 

Ulfilas supplemented his direct missionary work by 
his writings ; above all, by his translation of the Bible into 
the Gothic language. For this purpose he had to create 
an alphabet, since previously the art of writing was un- 
known among the Goths. Thus he is really the founder 
of Teutonic literature — that great literature which after- 
wards blossomed out in Chaucer, Luther, Shakespeare, 
Goethe. Ulfilasus omitted the Book of Kings from liis 
translation because of their warlike character — he 
considered that his people did not need Scriptural 

^ Ego Ulphila-'i semper sic credidi. 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 307 

encouragement for fighting, being only too ready for it 
already.^ Perhaps this is the first instance of a Bible 
expurgated on moral grounds. 

Ulfilas's translation only exists in fragments, the most 
important of which is the Codex Argenteus, containing 
portions of the Gospels. This manuscript is described by 
Scrivener as " the most precious treasure of the university 
of Upsal." 2 It consists of quarto leaves of purple vellum, 
with letters in gold and silver. The date assigned to it is 
the fifth or early sixth century ; that is to say, only about 
a century later than the time of Ulfilas himself. Other 
copies are the Codex Carolinus and the Ambrosian fragments 
published by Mai.^ Ulfilas went to Constantinople in the 
year 380, and there he died, either that same year, or the 
next year — the year of the second oecumenical council, 
worn out with his heroic, lifelong toils and the anxieties 
for his people, which crowded upon his later years. He 
was succeeded by Selenas — a man accounted " well fitted 
to instruct the people in the Church." 

The subsequent history of Gothic Christianity belongs 
to Western Christendom, since it follows the migration of 
the Goths. In Thracia, the home of its origin, it dis- 
appeared with the break-up of the nation in the year 395. 
But it became most important in the Gothic kingdom 
of Theodoric, which saw Arianism re-established for a time 
in Italy long after it had been extinguished in the Eoman 
Empire. Under the influence of the same wave of emigra- 
tion, it passed into Spain and across the Mediterranean to 
Africa, where at length it perished together with Chris- 

^ Philostorgius, ii. 5. 

2 Introd. to the Criticism of the Hew Testament, 4th edit. vol. ii. p. 146. 

^ Since Ulfilas was an Arian, the question arises, Did his heresy affect 
his translation of the Bible ? Prof. Scott finds a faint indication of such 
influence in the crucial test of the text, Phil. ii. 6, where Ulfilas has the 
Gothic word galeiko as his rendering of the Greek taa, although this word 
corresponds to the Greek SfxoLos, the watchword of the mild Arians whom he 
represented. For the rest, his version has no suspicion of heresy. We 
must remember — (1) that the Greek-speaking Arians claimed the Scriptures 
to be on their side ; and (2) that Ulfilas was neither an extreme nor a, cgn- 
tioversial Arian. 



308 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



tianity itself. The last remnants of Gothic Christianity 
in Africa disappeared under the devastating scourge of the 
Arab invasion, to give place to Islam and its blight upon 
civilisation. Meanwhile, at its old home in the East, 
another race and another type of Church life had blotted out 
all signs and all memories of Ulfilas's Church, its victories 
and its martyrdoms. 



DIVISION II 



THE MODEEN GEEEK CHUECH 
— ♦ — 
CHAPTER I 

CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 

(a) Cyrilli Lucaris, Confessio ; Smith, Vit. Cyr. Lucar ; Collectanea 
de Cyrillo Lucario, 1707 ; Palmer, The Eastern Catholic Com- 
munion, 1853, and The Orthodox and the Non-Jurors, 1868. 

(h) Neale, Patriarchate of Alexandria ; Ranke, The Ottoman Empire, 
Eng. trans., 1843 ; Findlay, Greece under Ottoman and Vene- 
tian Domination, 1856 ; Kyriakos, Geschichte der Orientalischen 
Kirchen von 1453-1898, Ger. trans., 1902. 

The fall of Constantinople was quickly followed by the 
subjugation of almost all the remnants of the Byzantine 
Empire. Even the Venetians and the Knights of St. 
John were swept from the Levant by the victorious Turks. 
The consequence was the subjection of the Greek Church to 
Mohammedan despotism. The sultan recognised the Church 
as a corporate institution, instituted and maintained official 
relations with the bishops, and issued specific regulations 
for the management of the Christians. The forcible con- 
version of the followers either of Jesus or of Moses, regarded 
as two prophets of Islam, was forbidden by the Koran. 
While obstinate idolaters were to be slain, Jews and Chris- 
tians were to be allowed to live and practise their religious 
rites, though not to proselytise. But both were treated 
with contempt, subjected to specific exactions and disabili- 
ties, and often liable to unchecked abuse and outrage. 

309 



310 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Christians were required to pay a capitation tax (called the 
haratsh), from which Mussulman inhabitants of the same 
provinces were exempt. But the most cruel and degrading 
burden laid upon them was the tribute of children which 
went to maintain the famous institution of the janissaries.^ 
A tithe of the young population, one boy in five, was 
demanded by the government. Every two or three years 
government officers went through the towns and villages 
selecting the healthiest and strongest boys to be trained for 
service as soldiers of the sultan. They were taken quite 
young, and carefully educated in Mohammedanism. The 
institution was a unique characteristic of the Ottoman 
Empire. It was originated by Orkhan, about the year 
1329, but organised much more thoroughly by his son 
and successor Murad, who has therefore been generally 
regarded as its founder. By this means the sultans were 
able to maintain a strong fighting force unattached to the 
pashas and unaffected by local interests, a rigorously disci- 
plined and highly trained standing army absolutely subject 
to the imperial authority. 

This, then, was the secret of the, power of the Ottoman 
Empire when at its zenith it boasted of ruling three conti- 
nents. At the time of the fall of Constantinople the 
number of janissaries was 12,000 ; under Suleiman the 
Legislator it rose to 40,000. But in later times these 
janissaries themselves became a menace to the weakened 
central authority, exercising their power for their common 
interests like the Eoman armies under the feebler emperors. 
In the year 1566 they obtained from Selim n. the right to 
make recruits of their own children. Thus they became a 
self-contained caste. At last the decline of the Greek 
population of the empire, which was the chief tax-producing 
element, rendered the serious drain upon it involved by the 
tribute of children disastrous to the finances of the State. 
At the same time the growing turbulence of the janissaries 
made them a constant source of anxiety to their master. 

During the reign of Mohammed iv. (a.d. 1649-1687) 

^ See Kyriakos, p. 9 flf. 



CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 311 

this unnatural method of recruiting the army came to an 
end. The last recorded case occurred in the year 1676. 
Meanwhile its long continuance was a proof of the abject 
degradation of the people who endured it for centuries. 
Not only was it a cruel outrage on the family ; it was a 
barefaced insult to Christianity, since it was an organised 
instrument of apostasy. How came the Greeks to bow 
their necks to the humiliating yoke, instead of preferring 
death to the dishonour of it ? In other respects their 
peaceful submission to the Ottoman rule is not surprising. 
This rule was not always harsh. In the Turkish Empire 
the peasant was at least a free man, while in Christian 
countries at the same time he was a serf, subject to cruel 
feudal tyranny. Still, in spite of all that is unheroic in the 
attitude of the Greeks, it is to the credit of the Church 
that she held on her course through centuries of abuse and 
hardships ; for all along the Christians were suffering from 
wrongs and miseries which they could easily have escaped 
by becoming converts to Islam. It is not to be supposed 
that none took this tempting course. The truth is, immense 
numbers did become Mohammedans. Manuel, the last of 
the Palseologi, joined the religion of the destroyer of his 
ancestors' throne. But these facts do not derogate from 
the stubborn fidelity of the multitudes who resisted the 
temptation to apostatise; on the contrary, they enhance 
the martyr-like character of it. The Greek Church has 
always gloried in her orthodoxy ; she has more reason to 
be proud of her very existence, more ground for congratula- 
tion in the fact that she has not been worn down by the 
continuous friction of centuries of abuse and contempt. 

Unhappily little can be said to the credit of the highest 
officials of the Church during these desolate ages. For the 
most part the simple peasants who clung to their faith did 
so against all inducements to abandon it. The case of their 
superiors presents a grim contrast to this unworldly fidelity. 
The patriarchs of Constantinople were now chosen and 
appointed by the sultan, although the fiction of a synodical 
election was more or less ostentatiously preserved ; and they 



312 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



generally proved to be pliant instruments in the hands of the 
government. That is not very surprising, since they were 
selected with this end in view. They commonly obtained 
the post by bribery and held it by sycophancy. Thus the 
Church was confronted with the unedifying spectacle of her 
chief priest cringing before the infidel. In return for his 
subserviency the patriarch of Constantinople was allowed to 
summon synods and to hold courts, not only for ecclesi- 
astical, but even for civil cases, among his own people.^ 

The patriarchs were frequently deposed by the sultans 
quite arbitrarily, and they often bought their places back 
again ; but some fell into perpetual disgrace, and some were 
strangled. At one time there were fourteen patriarchs in 
fifteen years. Some of the patriarchs were of notoriously 
degraded character. The patriarch Eaphael was said to 
have been a confirmed drunkard ignorant of Greek. 

Following the example in high places, bishops bought 
their positions, and were used by the government as magis- 
trates and tax-gatherers. The orthodox patriarchs of 
Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem were very difierently 
situated. These chief pastors were still elected by synods 
of local bishops as in older, happier times. But they had 
very little power, most of the Christian inhabitants of their 
provinces being heretics out of communion with their church. 
The one patriarch who exercised effective control over the 
Greek Church was regarded by patriotic Greeks themselves 
as a renegade and a traitor to their cause. 

^ Professor Kyriakos states that the patriarch of Constantinople not 
only did not lose power under the Turkish government, but even increased 
his privileges {GescMchte, p. 26). This is a most misleading statement. 
Certainly in external form and range of influence such was the case, and 
that in two ways— (1) This patriarch was now set over all the orthodox 
Christians in the Ottoman Empire, including those of the other three 
patriarchates — the patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, of 
course only those of the orthodox Church, now known locally as Melchite. 
(2) To his ecclesiastical authority was added civil jurisdiction. On the 
other hand, he could not call his life his own if in any matter he offended 
his despotic master. Moreover, what he gained in civil power was more 
than counterbalanced by what he lost in spiritual influence, as the nominee 
and officer of the hated Moslem power. 



CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 313 



A melancholy characteristic of the depression and 
degeneration of the later Greek Church is the absence of 
conspicuous names from its dismal history. If there were 
any village Hampdens or Miltons, the former started no 
successful rebellions and the latter were mute and inglori- 
ous. During outbreaks of popular fanaticism, and underi 
the cold, calculating persecutions instigated by the govern- 
ment from time to time in opposition to its professed 
policy, no doubt the noble army of martyrs was enriched 
by the addition of many a humble hero of the faith. But 
either the ability or the opportunity for any conspicuous 
feat of fidelity was lacking. The story of the Church had 
left the noble highlands where striking landmarks rivet 
our attention and descended to a featureless plain with the 
monotony of the desert. There was more learning silently 
cherished in the monasteries than is commonly supposed, 
and a higher standing of education was maintained among 
the Greeks than among most of their contemporaries in 
Europe. Moreover, Greek merchants grew rich in spite of 
fiscal disabilities. But there was no intellectual originahty, 
no literature of genius, no movement of distinction. 

In all this barren age there is just one name that has 
emerged out of the fog of oblivion into European fame, and 
that largely owing to the accident of Western connections. 
This is the name of Cyril Lucar, patriarch of Alexandria, 
and subsequently of Constantinople, who Lived at the time 
of the Eeformation, and became the courageous author of 
an abortive attempt to introduce the principles of Pro- 
testantism into the East. 

The Greek Church came into contact with Lutheranism 
under the patriarchs Joseph n. and Jeremiah IL, and later 
with Calvinism by means of the activity of Cyril Lucar. 
In the year 1559, Melanchthon, taking advantage of the 
return of Demetrius, a deacon of Constantinople who had 
been staying at Wittenburg, sent a copy of the Augsburg 
confession to the patriarch Joseph, claiming agreement 
between its tenets and the doctrines of the Eastern Church. 
It was received in chill silence, the prosaic interpretation 



314 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



of which may be that since it only existed in Latin and 
German — languages not studied at Constantinople — the 
patriarch did not put himself to the trouble of getting his 
deacon to explain it to him. Fifteen years later (a.d. 
1574), Martin Crusius produced a Greek version of the 
confession and sent it to Jeremiah n., who was then the 
patriarch of Constantinople, and received in return a polite 
reply. Thus encouraged, Crusius proceeded to point out 
how Lutheranism differed from Eomanism and to express a 
hope of union with the Eastern Church. Jeremiah's reply 
is uncompromising. The only way to union with the 
orthodox Church is to " follow the apostolical and synodical 
decrees." There can be no broadening out of a common 
basis of union ; the sole possibility is conversion to the 
Greek Church and admission into that communion as it 
now stands in its changeless rigour of doctrine and dis- 
cipline. In the year 1578, Jeremiah received a fuller 
account of Lutheranism ; but nothing came of any of these 
Lutheran overtures. 

Cyril's action was on different lines. It was at once 
less ambitious and more courageous. He knew the Greek 
Church too well to ignore its errors or imagine that in its 
present condition any fusion with a Protestant Church was 
either practicable or desirable. His aim was a reformation 
within the Eastern Church on Calvinistic lines — not the 
High Church idea of the reunion of Christendom, but the 
Protestant conception of a true gospel and a pure Church. 

Cyril Lucar was born at Candia, the chief town of 
Crete, in the year 1572. The island was then under the 
mild rule of the Venetians, who allowed more religious 
liberty than any other power. Several Greeks of interest 
in the movements of this time came from Crete. But 
Cyril was sent to Alexandria at the early age of ten, 
and there put under the tuition of his uncle Meletius Pega 
— another Cretan — who had been in Italy and seen 
enough there to return with strong anti-Roman convictions. 
Before he was twelve years old the lad was sent to Venice, 
and thence to Padua, where he came under the influence of an 



CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 315 



anti-Eoinan teacher Maximus, afterwards bishop of Cerigo. 
Subsequently he travelled in Germany and Switzerland, 
perhaps also in England during the reign of Elizabeth, though 
that is doubtful.^ In the year 1595 he returned to Alex- 
andria and was ordained a deacon. During this period of 
his life we find him for -a time at Constantinople, though 
on what business nobody knows. The Greeks having held 
a conference at Wilna with several Lutheran nobles and 
divines to seek a basis of union between the two communions, 
although with no results, Sigismund, the king of Poland, 
an energetic champion of the papacy, forbade the propaga- 
tion of Greek Church doctrines in his dominions under 
severe penalties. Meletius then sent Cyril to Poland on 
behalf of the cause of the Eastern Church, and he settled 
down in "Wilna for a time, supporting himself by teaching 
the Greek language. He was now like an ambassador 
from the Greek Church, an intermediary between Poland 
and the East. The king of Poland sent him to Meletius, 
exhorting the patriarch to revere the primacy of St. Peter 
and acknowledge the pope. Meletius returned a respectful 
but negative reply, and at the same time formally appointed 
Cyril his exarch in Sclavonia. Meanwhile Sigismund began 
to persecute in the interest of the Uniats — the party in 
favour of uniting the Greek Church with Eome on the 
Eoman terms. Necessarily Cyril had to " lie low " if he 
would remain in Poland while this tempest was sweeping 
over the country. But there is no evidence that he yielded 
any more than by keeping silence. At a later time his 
bitter enemy the Jesuit Sarga circulated a report to the 
effect that he had written a letter to the archbishop of 
Lowenberg professing his adherence to the Church of Kome. 
The letter was a forgery and the accusation based upon it a 
barefaced calumny. 

On his return to Alexandria Cyril was sent to his 
native island, to collect the usual contributions for the 
patriarchate. In the year 1602 he succeeded Meletius as 
orthodox patriarch of Alexandria. While he was in this 

^ See Neale, Patriarch of Alexandria, vol. ii. p. 360. 



316 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

ofi&ce the English king, James i., offered him free education 
for a Greek whom he might send over for the purpose. 
The fortunate recipient of this favour was Metrophanes 
Critopulus, who sadly disappointed his patrons by his extra- 
vagance and pretentiousness. Probably he was a clever 
if not a high-principled young man. In Germany the 
Lutherans assign to his authorship, " A Confession of the 
Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East." On his 
return to Egypt he became a metropolitan, and he ulti- 
mately attained to the patriarchate of Alexandria — of 
course, like Cyril, for the " orthodox " Greek Church there. 
The bulk of the Egyptians were of the Monophysite Coptic 
Church. 

Cyril opened up a correspondence with Archbishop Laud, 
whom he presented with an Arabic Pentateuch " as a sign of 
brotherly love " ; this is now preserved in Oxford, at the 
Bodleian Library. When on his travels he had secured a 
fifth century manuscript of the Scriptures at Mount Athos. 
This was the oldest accessible Greek Bible, the two older 
manuscripts which scholars now use being as yet unknown — 
namely, the Vatican, locked up in the pope's library, and 
the Sinaitic, lying undiscovered in the monastery of St. 
Catherine. All English students have reason to think of 
the name of Cyril Lucar with gratitude, for he presented 
his precious manuscript to the English nation in the person 
of King Charles i. It now lies open to view under a glass 
case in the King's Library at the British Museum — one of 
the most valuable of all the valuable treasures owned by 
Great Britain. We know it as the Alexandrian manuscript, 
not like the Sinaitic as named after the place where it was i 
found, nor because it represents the Alexandrian text — 
which is the text of the Vatican and the Sinaitic manu- 
scripts — but simply because its donor was the patriarch of 
Alexandria, so that it came to England immediately from 
that city. 

Cyril commenced his reforming efiforts in the Greek 
Church while at Alexandria. In the year 1621 he became 
patriarch of Constantinople, where he still laboured in the 



CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 317 

interest of the Eeformation. He was succeeded at Alex- 
andria by Gerasius, another Cretan, but a staunch upholder 
of old-fashioned Greek orthodoxy. 

Cyril drew up a Confession of Faith, a perusal of which 
makes it clear that he had strong leanings towards 
Calvinism. But how far he went in this direction has 
been a matter of dispute. His friends of the orthodox 
Church, and also English High Churchmen anxious for union 
with the Greek Church, have endeavoured to minimise his 
Protestanism when they have not thrown over Cyril in 
despair as a heretic. It is necessary, therefore, to have 
some of his statements before us in their exact phraseology 
if we would judge for ourselves where he stands. He 
begins with an affirmation of the Trinity — with respect to 
which all the leading reformers were agreed ; but he affirms 
the Greek doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from 
the Father hy the Son. Article iii. is as follows : " We 
believe that God, before the foundation of the world, pre- 
destinated His elect to glory without respect of their work- 
ing, and that there was none other cause which impelled 
Him to this election than His good pleasure and Divine 
mercy ; in like manner that before the foundation of the 
world He reprobated whom He would reprobate ; of which 
reprobation, if a man will regard the absolute right and 
sovereignty of God, he will without doubt find the cause to 
be the will of God ; but if again he regards the laws and 
rules of good order which the Divine will employs for the 
government of the world, he will find it to be justice, for 
God is long-suffering, but yet just." Here we have the full, 
unqualified Calvinistic doctrine of election, including re- 
probation, logically supra-lapsarian, though the final clause 
seems to introduce a qualification by insisting on justice, 
but that only dogmatically without any attempt at a re- 
conciliation with the earlier statement. The confession 
decidedly affirms baptismal regeneration — in which it 
agrees with the majority of the reformers. It declares that 
Christ alone " does the work of a true and proper Mediator " 
— a phrase which by its defining attributes " true and 



318 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

proper " has been said not to exclude the secondary' inter- 
cession of saints. 

Article ix. is as follows : " We beheve that none can be 
saved without faith. By faith we mean that which 
justifies in Jesus Christ, which the life and death of our 
Lord Jesus Christ produced for us, and which the gospel 
preaches, and without which it is impossible to please 
God." 

In treating of the doctrine of the Church, Cyril says : 
" The Church which is called Catholic containeth aU the 
faithful in Christ," etc. Then he proceeds, " There are 
particular visible churches," etc. In Article xii. he dis- 
tinctly affirms that the Church can err — a statement as 
abhorrent to an orthodox Greek as to a Eoman Catholic. 
Article xiii. declares that, "We believe that man is justified 
by faith, without works. But when we speak of faith we 
mean the correlative of faith, which is the righteousness 
of Christ on which faith takes hold," etc. 

If this is not Protestanism, what is Protestantism ? It 
is not even Melanchthon's mild and tempered synergism ; 
it is nearer to Calvinism than to Lutheranism. On the 
great dividing question, the fundamental question of the 
final authority, Cyril is decidedly Protestant. He says, 
" The authority of Holy Scripture is far greater than that 
of the Church, for it is a different thing to be taught by the 
Holy Spirit from being taught by man. Man may through 
ignorance err and deceive, and be deceived. But the Holy 
Spirit neither deceiveth nor is deceived, nor is subject to 
error, but is infallible." This reminds us of Chilling- 
worth's doctrine — " The Bible the religion of Protestants." 

In June 1627, Mcodemus Mentaxa, a native of Cepha- 
lonia and a monk, who had been to England, arrived at 
Constantinople with a printing press and a fount of Greek 
types. The English ambassador housed them ; but the 
Jesuits tried to gain over Mentaxa. They plied him with 
threats ; and at length they accused him of treason because 
he printed the royal arms of England at the beginning and 
end of his book. Mentaxa began the printing of Cyril's 



CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 319 



confession, but the Jesuits broke in and seized the types. 
Cyril then sent the document to Geneva, where the con- 
fession was printed in a Latin version. The pubHcation of 
it created a sensation in Europe. Here was the first 
ecclesiastic in the Greek Church professing the most 
thorough - going Protestant tenets, even echoing arrant 
Calvinism ! Most people took the document for a forgery. 
Then Cyril issued a new edition of the confession, this 
time in Greek, and with significant additions. He declared 
that the faithful ought to read the Holy Scriptures. The 
doctrines necessary to be believed, he said, may be dis- 
covered for themselves by regenerate persons, the Holy 
Spirit aiding them, and Scripture being compared with 
Scripture — most outspoken Protestantism again, and that 
on its basal principle and central point of difference from 
the Church, the question of the source of authority in 
doctrine ! On the other hand, Cyril says nothing about 
the authority of the Church. He adds an expression of 
his detestation of the adoration of images — practically 
the chief popular religious function in his own Church. 

Cyril did not find his patriarchate a bed of roses. 
No patriarch could have been at his ease in the office 
under the anomalous circumstances, but a reformer amidst 
stereotyped Eastern orthodoxy and papal intrigue was 
doubly threatened in this post of danger. The Greeks, 
however, did not at first trouble themselves to interfere 
with their patriarch, and it was by the machinations 
of his most deadly enemies, the Jesuits, that he was 
molested. Cyril issued a pastoral calling upon the faithful 
to withdraw from communion with all members of the 
Latin Church. But he had not the authority to maintain 
his policy. Five times • he was banished ; and five times 
he was restored to his office. He was fortunate in having 
for his friend the grand vizier, who was not to be deceived 
by the lies that were circulated about him. At last his 
enemies found their chance. The Sultan Amurath was 
absent from Constantinople and marching to Bagdad, when 
the Jesuits contrived to get a message sent to him informing 



320 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



him that Cyril was carrying on treasonable correspondence 
with the Cossacks. Anxious in the prospect of war, unable 
to investigate the charge at a distance, in hasty anger, 
Amurath ordered the patriarch to be executed. Cyril was 
strangled with a bow-string, and his body flung into the 
sea, on the 27th of June, 1638, in the sixty-sixth year of 
his age, and the thkty-sixth of his two patriarchates. Some 
fishermen found the body, and it was buried at night on 
an island in the bay of Nicomedia. 

Professor Kyriakos considers that Cyril Lucar " must 
be numbered among the first scholars of his time." ^ 
Whether he should be admitted to that position in an era 
of encyclopaedic learning among the men of the new en- 
lightenment in Germany may be doubted. But there can 
be no doubt that in the East he stood absolutely alone, the 
one brilliant star of his age. Better than that, he aimed 
at a genuine reformation, although this was on lines of 
Western theology for which his people were in no way 
prepared. It would be preposterous to look for reform of 
the Greek Church by means of its conversion to Calvinism. 

Cyril was followed in the patriarchate of Constantinople 
by his namesake at Beroea, who summoned a synod within 
three months of his predecessor's death. This synod 
anathematised the confession and also Cyril Lucar, betray- 
ing no doubt that he was its author. It affirmed the 
duty of Christian priests to repress all heresy to the utmost 
of their power. Cyril Lucar was described as " an 
intruder into the throne of Constantinople, abounding 
with the poison of the deadliest heresy " ; he was especially 
condemned for teaching " that the bread offered at the 
altar and also the wine are not changed by the blessing of 
the priest and the descent of the Holy Spirit into the real 
body and blood of Christ " ; and anathematised as an 
" Iconoclast " and " worse than an Iconoclast." The decrees 
of the synod were signed by the three patriarchs, including 
Metrophanes of Alexandria, who had owed so much to the 
murdered patriarch — an instance of base ingratitude. 

^ Geschichte, p. 145. 



CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 321 



In the year 1642 another synod took a significant 
course. It condemned Cyril's confession and Calvinism 
together, thus plainly showing that the bishops perceived the 
connection between them ; this synod did not name Cyril 
as the author of the obnoxious document. But in the 
synod of Jassy in Moldavia, which was held a little later, 
this confession was again attributed to Cyril. Among the 
bishops assembled at Jassy was Peter Mogila, the Eussian 
ecclesiastic, who issued a counterblast in the form of 
another confession of faith which came to be accepted as a 
standard test of orthodoxy. It was not till thirty-four 
years after Cyril's death that a public official denial of his 
authorship of the confession that bears his name, was put 
forth. This was at the famous synod of Bethlehem, 
which Dositheus, the patriarch of Jerusalem — himself a 
Cretan — took the opportunity of the dedication of the 
new church in the year 1 6 7 2 to gather together there. The 
synod condemned the Calvinistic confession and denied that 
Cyril Lucar was its author. A patriarch of Constantinople 
emitting such poison ! The idea was too horrible ! It 
could not be so ! We can appreciate the psychological 
attitude. But in view of sober historical criticism, can we 
attach any real value to this repudiation ? The further 
back we go, the closer and surer is Cyril's connection with 
the confession. A late denial of it to which the policy 
of convenience strongly urged has no weight whatever.-^ 

^ Moreover, there is plenty of collateral evidence showing that the 
confession was quite in accordance with Cyril's views expressed elsewhere, 
and demonstrating his essential Protestantism. Thus he writes to the 
archbishop of Spalatro, in the year 1618, stating that for three years he has 
compared the doctrine of the Greek and Latin Churches with that of the 
Reformed, and adding as the result of this prolonged study, "I left the 
Fathers and took for my guide Scripture and the analogy of faith alone. At 
length, through the grace of God, because I discovered that the cause of the 
reformers was the more just and the more in accordance with the doctrine 
of Christ, I embraced it." What could be more explicit than that? He 
continue:^, " I can no longer endure to hear a man say that the comments of 
human tradition are of equal weight with Holy Scripture." Then he states 
with approval the Calvinistic doctrine of original sin. He professes to 
affirm what he calls "the Greek doctrine of the sacraments"; but he 
repudiates the "chimera of transubstantiation." It must be remembered 

21 



322 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

In opposition to the anathematised confession the 
council endorsed Peter Mogila's confession. That was 
thoroughly Oriental. But this council in its antagonism to 
Calvinism went further and leaned towards Eome. It 
adopted a modified doctrine of purgatory, declaring that a 
certain period of suffering in Hades would be assigned to 
"those who had begun to repent, but who had not brought forth 
works meet for repentance." The synod of Bethlehem in a 
small way corresponds in the Greek Church to the council 
of Trent in the Eoman Catholic Church. It is a deliberate 
condemnation of the Eeformation and re-endorsement of 
the old teaching and practice. 

Although Cyril's attempt to originate a reformation 
in the Greek Church had ended in failure, this fact must 
not be set down to the brave man's discredit. He had 
not displayed any intellectual originality; he had not 
developed reformed doctrine from within his Church; he 
had only tried to transplant an exotic, and it is not 
surprising that this would not take root in a strange soil. 
The Eeformation in England was not indigenous. It 
too was a foreign importation, first from Wittenberg, then 
from Geneva. But the case of the remote Eastern Church 
is very different. Greek thought had been rarely much 
interested in movements of the Western mind. It was 
hardly touched by the Novatian and Donatist schisms, 
and but sHghtly affected by the great Pelagian controversy. 
We should not have expected therefore that it would 

that the Greeks had never worked out a metaphysical theory of the trans- 
mutation of the elements as the Latins had done, and had never accepted 
the Roman Catholic theory of essence and accidents, leaving the subject a 
mystery. But their doctrine was practically the same as the Roman 
doctrine, which indeed first appeared in the East, most distinctly, for 
instance, in Gregory of Nyssa. Now Cyril denies it. He asserts that only 
the faithful participate — a Calvinistic idea going even beyond Luther, who 
held that the unworthy do receive the body of Christ, but to their hurt, 
and certainly as foreign to the Greek as to the Latin Church. Then Cyril 
goes on to denounce the popular cult of icons. "As to image worship," he 
writes, "it is impossible to say how pernicious under present circumstances 
it is." He also pronounces against the invocation of saints — all Protestant 
and some of them advanced Calvinistic declarations. 



CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION 323 



have been much moved by such a thoroughly Western 
agitation as that of the Eeformation. But this is not all. 
The times were not ripe. In the East there had been no 
renaissance, no intellectual awakening as in the West. 
There had been no precursors of a reformation such as the 
German mystics, no stirring of conscience, no hunger and 
thirst for better things. The world needs " the man and 
the hour." Perhaps Cyril was not the man; he had 
neither Luther's passionate energy nor Calvin's masterful 
will. But if he had possessed both qualities he would 
have failed because the hour had not sounded. The blow 
may be struck; but there will be no explosion if the 
dynamite is not ready. The Greek Church was still 
in the patristic period. It had not advanced beyond 
John of Damascus. To Eastern Christendom, the new age, 
when, as the enthusiastic Ulric von Hutten declared, 
" it is a joy to live," had not arrived. Will this ever 
arrive ? 

There is one fact of a more specific character that 
must not be left out of account when we consider the 
heroic career of Cyril and his ultimate failure. Whatever 
views we may hold with regard to the question of an estab- 
Hshment of religion and the right relations of Church and 
State, we must perceive the anomaly of the Greek situation. 
For a Christian Church to be officially connected with a 
Mohammedan government could not but be an unholy 
alliance. When Cyril accepted the position of patriarch 
of Constantinople he put himself in a false position. In 
one way he gained freedom for his attempted innovations. 
The Ottoman government was more tolerant than most 
Christian governments of his time. While Spain burnt its 
heretics, the sultan was magnanimously indifferent to the 
quarrels among his Christian subjects, or perhaps he was 
ready to welcome them as weakening the power of the 
rival of Islam. At all events, as the officially recognised 
head of the Church owing his appointment to the sultan, 
Cyril could pursue his own policy with a large measure 
of independence. But he paid a dear price for that 



324 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



independence. In proportion as he stood aloof from the 
Greeks, sheltered by Turkish patronage, he lost influence 
over his compatriots. His olB&cial position neutralised his 
religious mission. He was bound to fail for the reason 
that "no man can serve two masters." 

Before passing from this disappointing passage of 
history, it may be convenient to glance at a later approach 
to the Eastern Church from the West, in the quaint 
action of the English non-jurors. Most people will now 
consider these worthy men to have been quite wrong- 
headed. A little knot of conscientious " passive-resisters " 
to the settlement under William and Mary, they contained 
some of the saintliest souls in the Church of England, 
among others Bishop Ken, the author of well-known 
morning and evening hymns. No one can doubt their 
sincere conscientiousness or their deep piety. Now it 
happened in the year 1713 that Arsenius the archbishop 
of Thebais was in England on one of those many humiliating 
begging expeditions to which the representatives of the 
Greek Church were repeatedly driven by the penury of their 
flock. Here he came in contact with the non-jurors, and 
this led them to open a correspondence with the Eastern 
patriarch through Peter the Great, then at the height of 
his power in Eussia. In the year 1717 they asked the 
tsar to send their proposals to the patriarchs, as from " the 
Catholic remnant of the British Chm-ches." It would 
seem that neither Peter nor the Eastern prelates at first 
suspected the isolated position of the non-jurors or their 
comparative insignificance. Indeed, so obscure was the 
movement on the English side, that it was not till after 
some years that news of it reached Archbishop Wade. 
Immediately he learnt what was going on — which was in 
the year . 17 24 — he wrote to Chrysanthus, the patriarch 
of Jerusalem, exposing the true position of affairs. This 
pricked the bubble. The non-juror's dream was shattered 
in a moment. 



CHAPTER II 



THE LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 

(a) Ricaut, State of the Ottoman Empire, 1670, and Present State of 
the Greek and Armenian Churches, 1679 ; Smith, De GrceccB 
hodiermo Statu, 1680 ; Covel, Some Account of the Greek 
Church, 1722. 

(6) Neale, Holy Eastern Church ; Ranke, The Ottoman Empire, 1843 ; 
Findlay, Greece under Ottoman and Venetian Domination, 
1856, and The Greek Revolution, 1861 ; W. A. Phillips, JVar 
of Greek Independence, 1897 ; " Odysseus," Turkey in Europe, 
1900 ; Cambridge Modern History, vol. x. chap, vi., 1907 ; 
Kyriakos, Geschichte der Orient. Kirchen, 1902 ; Silbernage, 
Verfassung und gegenwartiger Bestand samtlicher Kirchen des 
Orients, 1904. 

The later history of the Greek Church need not detain 
us, for although Greece has never enjoyed the happiness of 
the country whose annals are dull, the page is no longer 
lit up by the presence of great men or fresh ideas. For 
more than two centuries the Church was dragged through 
the depths of degradation. The rapid succession of 
patriarchs was maintained at Constantinople, precarious, 
subservient. The provincial bishops — subject to the 
patriarch, who was subject to the sultan — were entrusted 
with a measure of local control over their flocks. An- 
other order of Greek officials serving under the Turkish 
government consisted of the " Phanariots," who derived 
their name from the quarter of Constantinople which was 
their centre. These men had the charge of the taxation, 
the chief concern of the Ottoman government, which was 
often too weak to protect its subjects from attack and 
outrage, and wretchedly indifferent to the administration 

825 



326 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



of justice, that should have been the first object of its 
existence, but always energetic in the collection of the 
taxes. This odious task was entrusted to local authorities 
drawn from among the Greeks, who were despised and 
hated by their compatriots, like the Jewish publicans in 
the time of Christ. After the bishops and the Phanariots, 
there were no people of any power or influence among the 
Greeks. Hospitals and charities disappeared for lack of 
support. The monks were so poor that they went about 
visiting the markets with icons and cattle for sale. 
Libraries were stripped of their treasures in ancient manu- 
scripts, which were sold to any chance purchasers and so 
scattered in all directions beyond hope of recovery. In 
course of time the central government lost vigour and the 
result was atrophy of the extremities. A partial dis- 
integration took place and local pashas ruled as despots ; 
even the Phanariots exercised tyrannical power with little 
supervision, and, as men who had sold themselves to the 
foreign oppressor, proved more cruel to their fellow-Greeks 
than the Turks themselves. The extensive coast-hne of 
Greece left much of the mainland as well as the islands 
dangerously open to piratical raids. For two hundred years 
the most characteristic feature of the history of Greece under 
the Turks consists in the repeated raids of the pirates, both 
Turkish and Christian, and the fights to which they gave rise 
among the peasants and islanders. The concerns of religion 
seem to be swallowed up in a struggle for bare existence. 

One interesting series of events breaks the monotony of 
this story of suffering and humiliation, namely, the progress 
of the Venetian conquests. Venice had suffered in the 
general deluge that had swept over the wreck of the Byzan- 
tine Empire under the great Mohammed n. But gradually 
she more than recovered the ground she had lost in Eastern 
Europe, though never her own civic grandeur. After a 
ruinous war, the Venetians succeeded in conquering the 
Morea (a.d. 1684). But while they were thus able to 
restore a portion of the Ottoman Empire to Christendom, 
their action was creating a fresh complication in the Greek 



LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 327 



Church. In the first place, they were Eoman Catholics, 
with whose religious position the Greeks had no sympathy, 
having lively memories of the intrigues of the Jesuits and 
the attempts of the Uniats to capture the orthodox Church. 
Then the patriarch of Constantinople was a functionary 
under the Turkish government, and therefore officially 
bound to be opposed to the Venetian aggression. Never- 
theless, Morosini, the able Venetian leader, contrived to 
establish such good order that a number of Greeks were 
drawn from the Turkish provinces in the north to share in 
the growing prosperity of the Morea. Even Mohammedans 
also yielded to the temptation, and some of them joined 
the Greek Church, without any interference on the part of 
the authorities. 

The Venetians estabhshed the only liberal Eoman 
Catholic government of the age. They left the Greeks free 
to practise their religious rites. In this respect the policy 
of Venice was wholly different from that of Eome and the 
Jesuits, by whom hitherto the Latin Church had been repre- 
sented in the East. The Venetians restored to the Eoman 
Catholics the churches which the Turks had converted into 
mosques ; but the chief of these churches had been built 
by the Franks at the time of the Crusades or later. They 
did not permit the pope to interfere with the Greek Church, 
and they allowed it to retain all the powers and privileges 
it had possessed under the sultan. But the situation was 
awkward, because all the Greek bishops in the Morea were 
nominees of the patriarch of Constanstinople, who also 
appointed the abbots of many of the monasteries. The 
Venetians would not permit an exarch of the patriarch to 
live in the Morea or any patriarchal missive to be published 
by the clergy, and they invited the Greek communes to 
elect their own bishops. This can hardly be regarded as 
ecclesiastical tyranny ; it was a political necessity, and, 
considering the odious position of the patriarch, a necessity 
not unwelcome to patriotic Greeks. The Eoman Catholic 
priests, who of course were now free to enter the Morea, 
were men of higher character, better education, and more 



328 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



disinterested conduct, than the local Greek clergy, and as 
such they won respect from the inhabitants. Altogether 
the Venetian occupation was followed by an improvement 
in the condition of the conquered province. 

Gradually Morosini pushed his forces farther north 
and took more of the Grecian territory from the Turks. 
In September 1687 he entered the Piraeas, occupied 
Athens, and besieged the Acropolis. This led to disastrous 
consequences involving an irreparable loss to the civilised 
world. The Parthenon was then standing in all the glory 
of perfect Greek art, the grandest product of Doric archi- 
tecture, bearing in its pediment and on its entablature the 
masterpieces of Pheidias, the most sublime sculpture the 
world has ever seen. Into this centre of classic splendour 
crashed the Venetian shells, reducing the temple to ruins, 
pounding some of the sculpture to fragments, and leaving 
the best of it in the battered and broken condition in whicti 
we see it to-day at the British Museum, where, in spite 
of the ill-usage from which it has suffered, it is still recog- 
nised as one of the wonders of the world under the title 
of " The Elgin Marbles." ^ It is humihating to Europe to 
see that the ruin of the greatest relic of art in the city, 
that had been the crown and flower of ancient civilisation, 
was directly caused by men from the most beautiful city 
of modern civilisation, that it was the owners of St. 
Mark's who shattered the Parthenon. Here we perceive 
the mockery of war, which flaunts flags of glory and yet 
is in itself a shameful heritage of brutal barbarism. 

The next hundred and fifty years afford little of in- 
terest to be recorded concerning the fortunes — or rather 
the misfortunes — of the Greek Church under the Turkish 
domination. Pirates still ravaged the coasts, and pashas and 
Phanariots continued to oppress the inland people who were 
beyond the reach of the wild sea-rovers. Simony was more 
rampant than ever. The clerical office was systematically 
bought for the sake of the power it conferred and the dues it 

^ So named because sent to England by Lord Elgin (after suffering later 
ravages of war), and thus at last saved from total destruction. 



LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 329 

commanded, and this evil continued in the Venetian territory 
of Greece also. But in the Morea under the influence of the 
Catholic priests education now made some progress. Thus 
Venice was sowing the seeds of a better future. Eussia 
also, under the influence of Peter the Great, was stepping 
into the arena of European politics and preparing for her role 
as the protectress of the Oriental Churches. But the tsar 
was disappointed in not being joined by a general rising of 
the Christians when in the year 1711 he advanced to an 
attack of the Ottoman Empire, and he was compelled to 
agree to peace on humiliating terms. Thus Eussia's first 
serious act of interference only resulted in mischief. The 
Porte, having discovered its power, proceeded to use it by 
expelling the Venetians from Greece. In 1715 the Turks 
seized and pillaged Corinth, making slaves of the Greeks 
they captured there. This led the terror-stricken Greeks of 
the Morea to prostrate themselves before their old enemies, 
and to invite them to come and drive out the Venetians. 
They must have seen good reason to repent of their short- 
sighted cowardice when they were suffering from the ravages 
produced by the janissaries in the process of reconquest. 
The reversion of Morea and other Venetian acquisitions to 
Turkey was confirmed by the treaty of Passarovitz, which 
followed the victories of Prince Eugene, and wag signed 
on the 21st of July 1718. But Venice still retained 
possessions in Dalmatia and other parts. 

After this, by degrees, Eussia again assumed the proud 
position of champion of Eastern Christianity. In 1783 
Catherine ii. expelled the Mussulman power from the 
Crimea, where it had held its ground with more or less 
tenacity from the time of the Mongol invasion ; and about 
the same time she extracted a treaty from the Porte grant- 
ing the Greeks of the Archipelago the right to use the 
Eussian flag. 

Meanwhile the Greeks had been doing nothing for 
themselves. But a new day was now dawning. After 
more than three centuries of humiliation and oppression, 
once again Hellas was beginning to realise her national 



330 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



existence. It has often been shown in history that 
revolutions do not occur when the people who revolt are 
suffering most severely from oppression. In those dark 
and dismal days the power of tyranny is too great to allow 
of any hope of successful resistance, and the misery of its 
victims simply benumbs their miuds and paralyses their 
energies. It is with the beginning of better times that 
the fatal spell of despotism is broken, and daring projects 
of independence are engendered. Then the slumbering 
emotions of patriotism awake from their unnatural lethargy 
and the tyrant's slaves remember that they are men. Thus 
it was in Greece at the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
Already it seemed as though the Ottoman rule was on its 
decline, its vigour decaying, its power for mischief shrink- 
ing. There were isles of Greece that had become virtually 
self-governing. Even the mainland was certainly not worse 
treated than previously ; its crudest oppressors were not 
the self-indulgent Turks, but those disgraceful Greeks, 
nominally fellow-Christians — the Phanariots. Another in- 
fluence made the goad of tyranny felt more acutely, although 
it was not being applied more vigorously. This was the 
stirring of the Greek spirit itself. Findlay points out 
that it began with education. Greece had been singularly 
behind the rest of Europe, not so much in the degree of 
education, as in its nature. The modern spirit, with its 
revival of classical antiquity, which rose in the West with 
the Eenaissance, was not known in Eastern Europe. The 
East had neither Eenaissance nor Eeformation — those two 
mighty factors of the world as we know it. The vast signi- 
ficance of that double negation can scarcely be over-rated. 

Greece was still back in the Middle Ages, or rather in 
the late, the decadent patristic period. Her intellectual 
development had been arrested with the death of John of 
Damascus, the last of the Fathers. Since then her educa- 
tion had not been neglected ; for centuries it was far in 
advance of that of the rude and brutal West, and it was 
always maintained in some quarters with pedantic assiduity. 
But it was patristic education, ecclesiastical education, 



LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 331 

education in the dead theology of an effete Church. All life 
and soul, all adventure of speculation, all passion of poetry, 
had long since withered out of it. And while it harked 
back on the past it did not go far enough in that direction 
to find inspiration. It cared nothing for the glories of 
ancient Hellas. It prided itself in Chrysostom, not in 
Plato. Its boast was the orthodoxy of its Church, not the 
art, poetry, and heroism of its ancestry. It did not look 
back beyond Constantinople; it never found in Athens a 
name to conjure with. 

Then a new spirit awoke. The Greeks were roused to 
remember that they were the descendants and heirs of the 
most magnificent classical antiquity. The educational 
reform was commenced by Eugenios Bulgares of Corfu, 
who introduced it to Joannina, Mount Athos, and Con- 
stantinople. This alarmed the conservative ecclesiastics 
and annoyed the time-serving Phanariots, whose influence 
with the sultan put a check to it. But it was wel- 
comed in Eussia, whither Eugenios was invited in the 
year 1775, and where he was made bishop of Sclavonia 
and Kherson. He wrote a book on religious toleration 
which still more irritated the dignitaries of his Church, 
and called forth a reply by Anthimus the patriarch of 
Jerusalem. This miserable sycophant congratulated the 
Greeks on having escaped the artifices of the devil to 
which Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists had all suc- 
cumbed, and gave his version of the rise of the Ottoman 
Empire as a mark of the particular favour of heaven to 
protect them against the Western heresy with which the 
last of the Byzantine emperors were infected. Eugenios 
was followed by Adamantius Korais, a native of Chios, 
who settled in Paris, and put modern Greek into a literary 
form. At the same time, he ^ urged the principles of 
religious liberty and endeavoured to rouse his people from 
the intellectual torpor of orthodox bigotry. Under these 
influences the Greeks began to realise their nationality and 
to dream dreams of the revival of their great past. 

Nevertheless, the early chapters of the story of the 



332 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



struggle for Greek independence are grievously disappoint- 
ing. The first leaders of the revolutionary committee 
which was working for this end, known as the PhiliM 
Hetairia, were self-seeking men who deservedly lost the 
confidence of their followers. The movement did not 
make much headway till it was taken up by the peasants,^ 
and then it was conducted in some places with savage 
ferocity. On the 5th of April, 1 821, a thanksgiving service, 
at which twenty-four priests officiated while 5,000 fighting 
men gathered round, was held at Kalmata, in the open air, 
by the side of a rushing torrent, to celebrate the success of 
the Greeks in Messenia. Two days after this, Petrobey, the 
commander of the insurgent army, issued a proclamation 
in conjunction with a few primates — local Greek officials, 
corresponding to the Constantinople Phanariots — whom he 
designated the " Senate of Messenia." It was addressed 
to all the Christian nations, and its object was to seek 
their assistance in throwing off the Ottoman yoke. But 
the Greeks had to fight for their liberties. Dreadful 
scenes accompanied the popular risings which now ensued. 
Perhaps the worst case was that of the Morea, where the 
Greeks murdered the whole Mussulman population, amount- 
ing to ten or fifteen thousand peaceable men, women, and 
children, scattered over the peninsular, and quite helpless 
because overpowered by numbers. They first killed all 
they could lay hold of in the country parts. Some escaped 
to the towns. But one after another the towns were 
taken, and all the Turks who had sought refuge in them 
were also massacred. This was not a mere savage out- 
burst ; it was planned and instigated by the Hetairists. And 
it succeeded. The Morea was freed from the Turkish 
tyranny. The grim fact cannot be denied. The most 
damning evidence of the evil of despotism is seen in its 
destruction of natural human sympathies among the slaves 
it debases by its cruelty. 

The savage method of seizing the prize of liberty had 
to be paid for at a heavy price. The sultan had already 
* See Findlay, Greek Revolution^ vol. i. p. 195. 



LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 333 



begun to take severe measures for the suppression of the 
insurrection. When the news of the massacre in the 
Morea reached him he executed sixteen of the Hetairists 
in one day. Then he had a number of Greeks of the 
highest rank seized as hostages, under the circumstances 
a sensible policy ; several were beheaded. On the 22nd 
of April the despot's vengeance reached its climax in 
the execution of Gregorios, the patriarch of Constanti- 
nople, now an old man, much respected by his flock, 
who was hung from the lintel of the gate of the patri- 
archate with his sentence fixed to his breast. His body was 
exposed for three days and then given to the mob to be 
dragged through the streets and flung into the sea. Ee- 
covered by the Christians, it was conveyed in an Ionian 
vessel to Odessa, where it was received as a holy relic by 
the Eussians and buried with great pomp. The accusation 
against Gregorios was complicity in the insurrection. It 
would seem that he had not taken any active part in it, 
but that, on the other hand, he had possessed some know- 
ledge of what was going on which he had not reported to 
the government. Constructively, this was treason against 
the Ottoman power to which he owed his appointment, so 
that the sultan was justified in executing him ; and yet 
to have betrayed his fellow-Christians would have been 
treason to his race and his religion. It was a terrible dilemma 
for a good man to be in. Few can blame him for the 
course he chose, which was that of silence. But this was 
one more evidence of the monstrous anomaly of the position 
he held as the chief pastor of the Eastern Church and at 
the same time an official of the Mohammedan government. 
Gregorios was a man of high character, and the calm and 
dignified way in which he died helps us to sympathise with 
the view of the Greeks who honour him as a martyr. 

The violent death of so venerable a personage as the 
old patriarch of Constantinople sent a shock of horror 
through Europe. The Tsar Alexander withdrew his repre- 
sentative from the city. This was not merely a diplomatic 
move, since it appears that the Eussian ambassador was in 



334 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



personal danger. Finally, the tsar proceeded to concentrate 
an army of 100,000 men on the borders of the princi- 
palities. 

Meanwhile the conflagration of insurrection was spread- 
ing. When the monks of Mount Athos discovered that 
Eussia was not going to support it they were reluctant to 
give it their sanction. Their predecessors had been wise 
in coming to terms with Mohammed IL, the conqueror of 
Constantinople. Although for a time they favoured the 
Hetairists, ultimately they too came to terms, believing 
that the privileges of the Holy Mountain would be better 
protected by the Turks than by the Greek revolutionists. 
The situation was very compUcated ; because in its origin 
the revolution was mixed up with demands for religious 
liberty. The orthodox Chm^ch, under the patriarch of 
Constantinople and the bishops who were responsible to 
the Porte, was in a way an appanage of the Ottoman 
government. Besides, it was hide-bound in conservative 
officialism. On the other hand, men who had tasted the 
sweets of liberty thirsted for it in Church as well as in 
State. But no Greek Churchmen were more conservative 
than the monks of Mount Athos. While as Christians 
they were opposed to the Mussulmans, and would naturally 
have sided with their fellow- Christians in endeavouring 
to free the Church from the yoke of Islam, they had 
the greatest antipathy to the spmt represented by the 
French Eevolution, the infection of which had been caught 
by the Greek insurgents. A modern free - thinking re- 
volutionist was more alarming to them than a stolid, old- 
fashioned Turk. So they finally decided that on the 
whole it would be best for them to go on as they were 
These monks have always enjoyed large privileges of self- 
government, but little molested by the Turkish government. 
Their peculiar situation on their isolated isthmus has 
enabled them to live to themselves without interference 
from the great world beyond. But the judgment of the 
monks of Mount Athos was not without confirmation in 
other quarters. The primates and bishops discovered that 



LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 335 



the military leaders were not at all inclined to hand the 
powers of government over to them, so that they actually 
possessed less power under their fellow -Greeks than they 
had exercised under the Turks. The spirit of revolution is 
never sympathetic with officialism, whether lay or cleric. 

It does not fall within the limits of this chapter to 
sketch the course of the final establishment of Greek 
independence. If there is much that is disappointing in 
the issue, let it be remembered that history cannot repeat 
itseli. The modern Greeks could assume the names of 
Pericles and Demosthenes ; they could not conjure into 
life again the genius and glory of ancient Hellas. 
Greece was now inhabited by a mixed population. Very 
early, shoals of Sclavs had poured over the Balkans into 
the south ; subsequently Albanians had come in great 
numbers ; in some places the actual Greeks were quite out- 
numbered by the alien immigrants. The resultant popula- 
tion is only Hellenic in geography, language, and religion, 
not at all in purity of race. The Greeks of to-day are not 
the Greeks of Solon, and Pericles, and Plato. They are a 
mixed race ; which, however, is bravely striving to revive 
the ancient Hellenic traditions. We may well congratulate 
them on the liberties they have won and the progress they 
are still making, without burdening them with the absurd 
expectation that they will emulate in the twentieth 
century A.D. the deeds of their predecessors of the fourth 
century B.C. 

After Greece had established her freedom, the con- 
nection of the Church in Greece with the patriarch of 
Constantinople was difficult to define. At first all mutual 
relations were broken off. This was inevitable, since the 
patriarch was an accredited official under the Ottoman 
government. The clergy ceased to mention the patriarch's 
name in their prayers, and in this respect followed the 
example of the prayers used in those parts of the Greek 
Church which were outside his recognised rule. The 
independence of the Church in Greece was not effected 
without opposition. Bishops from provinces of the Turkish 



336 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Empire, encouraged by the monks of Mount Athos, came 
into Greece in order to support the patriarch's claim of 
authority ; but the Greek bishops would not yield to their 
persuasions. 

In the year 1833 a national synod decreed that the 
orthodox apostolic Church of Greece, while it preserves 
the dogmatic unity of the Eastern orthodox Churches, is 
dependent on no external authority and spiritually owns 
no head but the Founder of the Christian faith. In 
external government, which belongs to the crown, it 
acknowledges the King of Greece as its supreme head. 
The Holy Synod consists of prelates appointed by the king, 
and a royal delegate attends its meetings and counter- 
signs its decrees, having a veto on its proceedings. Since 
the patriarch ignored this decision two parties now arose, 
one supporting it, the other siding with Constantinople. 
At length, after much negotiation, in the year 1850 the 
patriarch and synod of Constantinople published a decretal 
of the Oriental Church recognising the independence of 
the Greek Church under certain restrictions, the terms of 
which were adopted two years later by the Greek Parlia- 
ment. According to this decision, the rights of the Greek 
synod in home affairs are recognised, but the patriarch can 
interpose in matters that affect the whole Church. In the 
year 1863, Prince George, a Lutheran, having become 
King of Greece, it was enacted that " The orthodox Church 
of Greece, acknowledging for its Head the Lord Jesus 
Christ, is indissolubly united in doctrine with the Greek 
Church of Constantinople and with every other Church 
holding the same doctrines." 

The patriarch of Constantinople is the spiritual head 
of the whole orthodox Church, and the secular head of 
the Greek Church in the Turkish dominions.^ He has 
jurisdiction over the whole of European Turkey, part of 
Bulgaria, Eumelia, Asia Minor, the ^gean Islands, and 
Crete. During the years 1843 to 1845 there was a great 

^ See Silbernagl, Verfassung und gegenwdrtiger Besta'iid sdmtlicher 
Kirchen des Orients, p. 9. 



LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 337 



contest between the patriarch of Constantinople and the 
synods of the patriarchates of Jerusalem and Syria on the 
right to choose their patriarchs without reference to Con- 
stantinople, and the latter gained their point.^ But the 
orthodox patriarch of Alexandria is still subject to the 
patriarch of Constantinople. He, however, is a merely 
titular official with but a shadow of a diocese, since the 
Copts of the national Church in Egypt are Monophysites, 
separated from the Greek Church. There are about 37,000 
orthodox Greek Christians in Egypt, 28,000 under the 
patriarch of Antioch, 15,000 subject to the patriarch of 
Jerusalem.^ 

Melancholy as the story of the Greek Church during 
the later centuries of its history may be, it is cheering to 
observe signs of awakening life during quite recent years. 
These are to be traced in two directions. 

In the first place there is a remarkable development 
of scholarship among the higher ecclesiastics. Learning 
was never allowed to die out in the leading monastic 
centres ; but hitherto this has been patristic learning 
without the least recognition of critical scholarship. Now 
the criticism of the West is breaking into the mind of the 
East. Students from the Greek Church are now to be 
found in German universities. The result is that the 
studies of Berhn, and Heidelburg, and Strasburg are being 
transplanted to Constantinople and Athens. Already these 
studies have borne fruit, and the Greek Church is coming 
forward with its contributions to historical theology. 

The other movement is of a more popular character. 
It consists of the formation of societies for Biblical study.^ 
These societies are quite unecclesiastical in form and are 
chiefly maintained by laymen. At first they were frowned 
upon by the clergy. But their good effects in reformation of 
character are winning them recognition as truly Christian 
brotherhoods, that men who have the spiritual and moral 

^ See Silbernagl, Verfassung und gegenwartiger Bestand sdrrUlicher 
Kirchen des Orients y p. 24. 

^ Ibid. p. 26. * Called oTLfKKoyoi, or vereins. 

22 



338 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



welfare of the people at heart should welcome gladly. 
Unlike similar movements in Eussia, which are almost 
confined to dissenters in formal separation from the 
national Chm^ch, these societies do not involve any such 
severance. We may compare them to the Bible readings 
of evangelical members of the Church of England, such 
as those that are fed by the fervour of Keswick. But they 
are more closely organised, and cannot but be recognised 
as indicating some return to the primitive idea of the 
Church. 

The movement is spreading rapidly. At Constantinople 
there are more than ten of these brotherhoods. In Smyrna 
quite a new religious life is blossoming out among the 
associations. They have appeared at Ephesus, at Heleopolis, 
at Arreon. In some places the brotherhood has led to 
two preachings on the Sunday, one early in the morning 
actually in the church, the other in the club-house ( Verein- 
hause) later in the day ; for this second preaching, however, 
sometimes there is substituted a catechising of men, women, 
and children. In Athens there are two brotherhoods. 
One has been formed at Patros in Cyprus. Meanwhile 
the need of schools for the clergy is being pressed, and 
already there is preaching by the parish popes in some 
places and no longer only by visiting priests and bishops. 

As early as the year 1818 a Greek society for the 
circulation of the Scriptures was formed with the approval 
of the patriarch Cyril VI., and in conjunction with the 
British and Foreign Bible Society. Nevertheless, the excite- 
ment which arose in the year 1901 on the translation of 
the Bible into the vernacular would appear to indicate 
a reactionary movement on the part of the obscurantists. 
But the case is very complicated. In the first place there 
is a strong clerical aversion to a translation promoted by 
laymen without any ecclesiastical sanction. Then the new 
passion for classicism is irritated by a seeming degradation 
of Scripture. It is said that no Greek vulgate is needed, 
as the children are now taught to read classical Greek 
in the schools. Behind all this there is the inveterate 



LATER GREEK CHURCH UNDER THE TURKS 339 

horror of innovations in the Greek Church, together with 
the superstition of the ignorant population in dinging to 
the old venerated form of the Bible. 

Whether the brotherhoods will be able to remain in 
connection with the ancient Greek Church, whether they 
are the little leaven that is to leaven the whole lump — a 
consummation to be devoutly desired, or whether the 
garment of antiquity, stiffened with its threefold em- 
broidery — doctrinal, ceremonial, disciplinary, will prove 
too inflexible to allow it breath and life, the future will 
declare. In the latter case we may see a Greek Pro- 
testantism breaking away from the old orthodox Church. 
But if that result can be avoided without stifling the new 
movement, we may hope that the old dream of More and 
Erasmus in the West may come true in our own day in 
the East, and an ancient Church be revived and reformed 
from within. With the sad history of that Church before 
us it is difficult to be sanguine of such a result. We cry 
with the sceptical prophet, " Can these dry bones live ? " 
But at all events the new movement deserves warm 
encouragement from earnest Christian people, that the 
light thus kindled may not be quenched and the great 
Church of the East sink down again into dim torpor. 



CHAPTER III 



THE OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK 
CHURCH 

Hackett, History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 1901 ; Malan, 
History of the Georgian Church, 1866 ; Jirecek, Geschichte der 
Bulgaren, 1876, and Das Furstenthum Bulyarien, 1891 ; Miller, 
The Balkans, 1898 ; La Macedoine, 1900 ; von Mach, The Bul- 
garian Exarchate, 1907 ; Mijatovich, History of Modern Servia, 
1872 ; Comte A. de Gubernatis, La Servie et les Series, 1898 ; 
Silbernagl, Verfassung und gegenwartiger Bestand samtlicher 
Kirchen des Orients, 1904. 

The independence of the Church in Greece is not without 
precedents. One of the most interesting is afforded by the 
Church of Cyprus, the history of which is exhaustively 
described in Mr. Hackett's learned work.^ That Church, 
which was founded by Paul and Barnabas, claimed to be in- 
dependent of patriarchal interference on the ground of its. 
apostolical origin and its ancient usage. Nevertheless, the 
patriarch of Antioch endeavoured to bring it into subjection 
to his authority ; and therefore it sent an appeal to the 
council of Ephesus on the question (a.d. 430), which 
resulted in a decision in favour of the independence of 
Cyprus. ' It was decreed that, " if it be not in accordance 
with ancient custom for the bishop of Antioch to hold 
consecrations in Cyprus, as the most religious men who are 
in attendance at this holy council have assured us in their 
memorials and orally, the presidents of the holy churches 
which are in Cyprus shall enjoy, freed from molestation 
and hindrance, the right of performing for themselves the 

* A History of the OrLhodox Ch urch of Cyprus. 
340 



OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 341 

consecrations of the most holy bishops according to the 
canons of the holy Fathers and ancient custom" (Canon 
viii.). The caution of the council in making this decision 
conditional is very remarkable. But no patriarch of 
Antioch in later times was able to produce evidence 
rebutting the statement of the Cypriolites concerning 
the "ancient custom/' 

In the reign of Zeno (a.d. 474-491), Peter the Fuller, 
then patriarch of Antioch, revived the claim to authority 
over Cyprus, and the emperor favoured his cause, till 
the alleged appearance of St. Barnabas in a vision, 
leading to the discovery of his bones in a chest under a 
carob tree, silenced all opposition. Nevertheless, a certain 
connection with Antioch was preserved, Cyprus receiving 
the holy chrism from the patriarch of that city, but of 
necessity in those later times when only patriarchs could 
consecrate it. Therefore they were misled who took this 
fact as a sign of general subjection. Subsequently Cyprus 
became famous as the see of the Church writer Epiphanius. 
In the year 647 the island was conquered by the Arabs, 
the chief city Constantia destroyed, the metropolitan church 
profaned, and many of the citizens massacred. So cruel 
was the Mussulman oppression that a great number of the 
inhabitants, led by their archbishop John, left Cyprus and 
settled in the province of the Hellespont at the invitation 
of the emperor, Justinian ii. There they preserved their 
ecclesiastical independence, as an orthodox Church, now 
within the confines of the patriarchate of Constantinople, 
but no more under its jurisdiction than they had been 
previously under that of Antioch. The migration of these 
" pilgrim fathers " was not a success. They were not 
destined to anticipate the story of the Mayflower and 
the founders of New England. Many perished on the 
journey. The remnant who landed did not stay long; 
they soon returned to Cyprus, where they lived on as 
best they could under the Mohammedan rule, but still 
as a distinctly organised Church. 

Under Constantine Copronymus Cyprus was temporarily 



342 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

freed from the grasp of Islam (a.d. 743). But it was 
recaptured early in the ninth century by the famous Harun- 
al-Rashid. Yet even subsequent to this misfortune it 
enjoyed a measure of liberty, so that it was used as an 
asylum by fugitives from Moslem oppression in Palestine 
and Syria. After undergoing various vicissitudes of fortune 
Cyprus was finally wrested from the Arabs by the emperor, 
Nicephorus Phocas (a.d. 963-969). It now remained 
under the Byzantine rule till it was taken possession of 
by the English king, Richard L, and then used for some 
time as a strategical centre from which the Crusaders could 
invade Syria. Richard sold the island to the Templars, 
who in turn gave place to the Knights of St. John. 

After the scandalous capture of Constantinople by the 
Franks, like the rest of the Greek Church, Cyprus was 
..aMoyed by the impartiiiefit pretensioiis of Western prelates. 
J At a meeting of the Latin clergy now domiciled in Cyprus, 
it was decreed among other things that no Greek should 
be ordained as a priest or admitted into a monastery 
without the consent of his feudal superior, who of course 
was a Latin. The orthodox clergy were required to swear 
fealty to the Latins. They appealed against this exaction 
to the Greek patriarch of Constantinople — now residing 
at Nicsea — and he forbade them to yield. The result 
was much distress and confusion for the Greeks in Cyprus, 
which led them at last to petition for definite union with 
the patriarchate of Constantinople, a proposal to which 
many difficulties were raised owing to the alleged con- 
tamination of their Church with Western usages (a.d. 
1405-1412). The monk Bryennios, who had been 
commissioned to enquire into the situation, argued strongly 
against the union, declaring that for his own part he would 
rather suffer a thousand deaths than see the orthodox 
Church united to the Cypriolite. Thus this unhappy 
Church, which in the old days had fought for her inde- 
pendence of Antioch, was now forced to remain apart 
when she sought union with Constantinople. The Venetian 
occupation made no difference to the strained ecclesiastical 



OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 343 

situation. Cyprus was still submitting against her will to 
papal intrusion on the one hand, and yet repudiated on 
the other hand by the Eastern Church because of that 
intrusion. 

In the year 1570 the island was captured by the Turks, 
an event which was not altogether evil, since it put an end 
to the tyranny that the Roman Catholic Church had exer- 
cised over the Greek Christians for four centuries. At first 
the Ottoman rule was mild ; the Cypriolites were allowed 
the free use of their churches, the right to ransom their 
monasteries, permission to acquire property, and the 
supremacy of the orthodox over all other Christian bodies 
in the island. No indulgence was shown to the Latins. 
The Greek bishops were constituted guardians of the 
Christian community, and in process of time the influence 
of the archbishop overshadowed that of the Turkish 
governor. But he had continual trouble with Turkish 
rapacity and misgovernment. We cannot follow out the 
weary story. The last scene of cruelty is the worst. It 
occurred early in the nineteenth century. Archbishop 
Cyprianos had exerted himself in promoting education and 
improving the condition of his flock. When the Greek war 
of independence broke out, Cyprianos and his clergy were 
accused to the Porte of complicity in the rebellion. On 
the 9th of July in the year 1821 the archbishop and 
three metropolitans were saddled like horses in front of 
the governor's palace ; bits were roughly forced into their 
mouths, breaking their teeth ; they were driven along 
with spurs, and finally hanged on trees. Nearly all the 
Christians of eminence were also massacred. One account 
gives 470 as the number of the victims. At length deliver- 
ance came. In the year 1872 Cyprus passed into the hands 
of the British government. Since then the Greek Church 
in the island has been entirely free. There is an English 
missionary church ; but of course this has no official status, 
and unlike the old Latin Church it has neither power nor 
desire to interfere with the ancient orthodox Church of 
Cyprus. 



344 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

The Church of Georgia is another branch of the 
Greek Church, which long enjoyed a virtually inde- 
pendent organisation. The Georgians appear to be the 
most ancient race inhabiting the Caucasus, having no 
affinity either with the Aryan or with the Turanian 
families. They are famous for having preserved a line 
of kings for two thousand years, reigning sometimes inde- 
pendently and at other times under the suzerainty of 
Persia, of the Eastern Empire, and of Turkey. A similar 
individuality is to be seen in their Church, although it has 
always been considered as part of the great orthodox 
Church of the East. Claiming a fabulous origin under 
the patronage of the Virgin Mary and through the preaching 
of St. Andrew, it has been traced back to the third century, 
under the influence of a woman named Nonna, or Nina, a 
poor captive who is said to have converted the king, 
Miriam (a.d. 265 — 318). In the next century, under 
Constantine, Greek missionaries effectually Christianised 
the little isolated mountain kingdom ; and from that time 
to this it has preserved its fidelity to the faith in spite of 
harsh persecution, first from the Persians, then from the 
Mohammedans.^ Miriam's son and successor, Bakar, is said 
to have been a zealous Christian who caused the gospel to 
be preached among his people, and had churches built in 
various places over the land. One of the most famous, 
the cathedral of Khoni, is ascribed to the next king — 
Muridat ill. The Georgians — or Iberians as they were 
also called, had bishops consecrated at Constantinople, 
and were reckoned in the patriarchate of Antioch. But 
their remoteness and national and racial distinctness led 
to their Church history running its own course, apart 
from that of the main body of the orthodox community. 
At the end of the fourth century. Bishop Abda having 
set fire to a Persian temple and refusing to rebuild it, the 

^ The claim put forth for St. George as a missionary and patron saint 
of Georgia is due to ignorance of the origin of the kingdom's name and 
wholly without foundation. "Georgia" is derived from the Persian Gurj, 
So we have Gurjistan = Gurgland = Georgia. 



OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 345 



country was invaded by the Persians. Near about the 
same time it was ravaged by the Eoman forces and as 
a result its church broken off from connection with the 
Greeks. Muridat iv. came under the glamour of Julian's 
strange religion, which had so little fascination for that 
emperor's own subjects; but his son, Archil (413-446), 
carried on an active campaign against heathenism and 
heresy. The New Testament appears to have been trans- 
lated into Georgian during the fifth and sixth centuries.^ 
About the same time Archbishop Mobidakh, a Persian by 
birth, introduced Arianism into Georgia and endeavoured 
to force it on the Church. He was deposed by a synod 
imder the influence of Bishop Michael and the queen, 
Sandukhta, an earnest Christian woman who had built a 
church at Mtykhetha in honour of the proto-martyr, St. 
Stephen. Subsequently Zoroastrianism made some progress 
in Georgia ; on the other hand, the conversion of one of 
the Magi named Eajden to the Christian faith, and his 
martyrdom among his own people by being nailed to a 
cross and there torn to pieces, had a counter influence. 
The Church of Georgia was now organised under its chief 
bishop, who bore the title of Catholicos of Mtykhetha 
and of Iberia. He does not appear to have been re- 
sponsible to any of the four patriarchs after the year 556, 
when P'harsman iii. separated the country from the Byzan- 
tine authority. During the reign of the same king a 
great impulse was given to Christianity in Georgia by the 
arrival of thirteen preachers from Syria. An air of 
mystery surrounds them. They are said to have reached 
Mtykhetha by crossing a river dry shod. Their advent 
and influence suggests the coming of the friars to England. 
The real miracle was the spiritual awakening that accom- 
panied their mission. Their reputed burial - places are 
marked by churches still standing. 

The story of the Georgian Church is a record of 
repeated persecutions. After the successive Persian per- 
secutions under the Magi came the Mohammedan flood of 
^ See Scrivener, Introduction, 4th edit. vol. ii. pp. 156-158. 



346 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

conquest and its consequent sufferings for the Christians. 
In the ninth century the district of Ap'hkhazia, which stood 
politically separate from Georgia under its own king, also 
had its own catholicos, so that the Georgian Church now 
consisted of two mutually independent provinces. In the 
same century an Iberian convent was founded at Mount 
Athos It still exists and is now the third in impor- 
tance among the monasteries of the Holy Mountain. 
David III., known as " the Eeformer," coming to the throne 
in the year 1089, called together a synod which purged 
the Church of the Monophysite and other heresies. He 
showed himself a strong ruler both as regards Church and 
State. Now came the most flourishing days of Georgia — 
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries — when Georgians 
of some eminence in science and literature did their work. 
Among them were Arsenius, theologian, physician, meta- 
physician, and poet, called from the caves of Shiomgiusk 
to be court chaplain ; Ephrem, his schoolfellow ; George, 
the founder of the school at Tiphlis and translator of 
Scripture; Theophilus, the "creator of hymnology" in 
Georgia ; John Taitcha, whose writings are said to be pre- 
served at Mount Athos ; and Demetrius the Solitary of 
Garedj. The reign of Queen Tamar in the second half 
of the twelfth century has been reckoned the golden age 
of Georgian literature, both ecclesiastical and civil. Then 
followed a time of overwhelming calamities during the de- 
vastating invasion of the Mongols under Genghis Khan, when 
Christians of all classes and ages were burnt alive in the 
churches, and pyramids of human heads marked the pro- 
gress of his soldiers. Mtykhetha was reduced to a heap 
of ruins, its cathedral, said to have been a most beautiful 
building, sharing in the general destruction, and all the 
inhabitants remaining in the city killed. The number of 
deaths attributed to this pest of humanity in Georgia alone 
was estimated at 300,000. 

Genghis Khan left the bleeding country disorganised 
and in hopeless confusion. She had scarcely begun to 
recover before the Turks commenced their incursions. 



OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 347 



Almost in despair, the qneen, Eusudana, appealed for help 
to the pope, Gregory ix. (a.d. 1239). She received in 
response a mission of seven monks sent to convert her 
country to the papacy! In the year 1400 came Timour, 
with his sweeping deluge of ruin. Throughout all these 
troubles Georgia remained true to the faith and added 
continually to her glory of martyrdom. Alexander i. 
(A.D. 1414-1442) rebuilt the cathedral of Mtykhetha, 
a structure which is in existence to-day. A little later 
serious attempts were made by the papacy to bring 
Georgia into the Eoman Church, but without any result. 
The fall of Constantinople left the Georgians at the 
mercy of the Mohammedans and without a friend. The 
bishops were silenced, the schools closed, the people 
harried by the Moslem Persians. At length this much 
persecuted nation turned to Eussia for protection. In 
the first instance that course did not bring much relief. 
During the seventeenth century a succession of apostates 
from the Church ruled Georgia as Mohammedans. But 
in the year 1701, Wakhtang vi., a Christian, came to the 
throne; he enacted a series of laws on Christian lines, 
known as the " Code of King Wakhtang." Now followed 
a period of temporary prosperity. But the next sovereign 
was a Mohammedan, and after his reign Georgia suffered 
again and again from alternate Persian and Turkish 
tyrannies, in the midst of which troubles the Church 
was seriously disturbed by a mission of Capuchin monks 
and by other efforts to induce it to enter the Eoman 
communion. For a time the current seemed to be setting 
in that direction, no doubt in despair of deliverance from 
intolerable oppression, except by help in the West. But 
ultimately Oriental orthodoxy triumphed. 

In the year 1783, Georgia came under the protection 
of Eussia, and the Church of Georgia was then united to 
the Eussian Church. In the year 1800 the country be- 
came an integral part of the Eussian Empire. Eleven years 
later the office of catholicos was abolished and the 
metropolitan then entitled "Member of the Synod and 



348 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Exarch of Georgia." He is now known as " Exarch of 
Karthalinia and Kakheth." 

The Church of Montenegro may be mentioned as from 
the first a virtually independent body in the orthodox 
communion. This little mountain State has the unique 
glory among its neighbours of never having been conquered 
by the Turks. Formerly its Vladika, or prince bishop, if 
not already ordained was required to obtain ordination 
from the orthodox metropolitan of Carlowitz. In the 
nineteenth century the ordination was transferred to the 
metropolitan of Eussia. On the death of the Vladika 
Peter ii. (a.d. 1851) the offices of prince and bishop 
were separated. 

It remains for us to note those limbs of the Greek 
Church which have been more recently severed from the 
parent stock on national grounds, although retaining their 
doctrinal orthodoxy. 

One of the most important branches of the orthodox 
Church now independent of the patriarchate of Con- 
stantinople and organised as a separate national church is 
the Church of Bulgaria. Here a racial distinction lies 
at the root of the severance from the Greek authority. 
The Bulgarians are a Turanian race, akin to the Finns and 
the Tartars, who first appeared on the banks of the Pruth 
in the latter part of the seventh century. From the time 
of the conversion of Boris in the ninth century they have 
been a Christian people and part of the holy orthodox Church. 
They have an ancient literature dating back to the age of the 
founders and early organisers of their Church, Cyril and 
Methodius, which consists for the most part of translations 
of Greek theological works. Bulgaria became a centre of 
the activity of the Bogomiles, and therefore a scene first of 
religious revival and then of its too common sequel — 
persecution. Conquered by the Turks in the fifteenth 
century, Bulgaria long suffered from the withering blight 
of the Ottoman tyranny in common with the other 



OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 349 



Oriental Churches. She was even in a worse plight than 
her neighbours. The misgovernment of the Phanariots 
and the despotism of the bishops who owed allegiance to 
the patriarch of Constantinople as a minister of the sultan 
were hard enough to be borne in Greece ; but there the 
people had at least to deal with their fellow-countrymen. 
In Bulgaria the oppression was in the hands of an alien 
priesthood. The patriarch of Constantinople appointed 
Greek bishops, and they in turn Greek parish popes. The 
state of affairs may be compared to that of the Anglican 
Church in Ireland and Wales until recent times. But it 
was really ten times worse ; for this alien priesthood was 
in the employ of the cruel, unjust, Mohammedan govern- 
ment of the Ottoman Empire. Thus the Bulgarians suffered 
from a double grievance — the intrusion of foreign Church 
leaders, and these men acting as servants of the Turkish 
tyranny under which they groaned — a Greek ministry 
serving the Turks. 

At length patriotic or rather racial feelings began 
to stir in the breasts of the long-enduring Bulgarians. 
The revival sprang from a literary awakening, which was 
first seen in the work of Paisii, a Bulgarian monk of 
Mount Athos, who published a history of his people and 
their saints.^ This was followed by the autobiography of 
Bishop Sofronii,^ written in a modified Sclavonic dialect. 
Bulgarian schools were now established. That provoked 
the Greek clergy to establish schools of their own, and to 
attempt the suppression of Sclavonic literature in favour 
of the Greek. But the national movement spread. The . 
Bulgarians addressed an appeal for support to the pope, 
and for a time some progress was made in connecting 
their Church with the Uniats. But this , never went far, 
and it soon died out. The people's aspiration was for 
an independent Bulgarian Church. There were repeated 
attempts at insurrection ; but they all failed. It was the 
Greek ecclesiastical tyranny, rather than the Turkish 

* Istoria Slaveno BolgarsJca. 
■ ^ Life and Sufferings of the Sinful Sofronii. 



350 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



political despotism, against which the movement was 
agitating. The sublime Porte was astute enough to take 
advantage of this fact. It had no compunction in throw- 
ing over its own subservient slaves if by so doing it could 
divide and weaken the Christian element in the empire. 
On the 1 1th of March, 1870, the Turkish government issued 
a firman granting the Bulgarians a right to possess their 
own exarchate independent of the patriarch of Con- 
stantinople. He was to have jurisdiction over fifteen 
dioceses, and others were to be added if two-thirds of the 
population desired it. The patriarch strenuously opposed 
this measure, and delayed the execution of it for two years. 
In the year 1872 the first exarch was appointed ; and the 
patriarch immediately excommunicated him. On the 23rd 
of April of that year the exarch, supported by three 
bishops, all lying under the ban of the patriarch, celebrated 
the communion in the Bulgarian church at the Phanar ; 
on the 11th of May the Bulgarian Church was declared 
independent; and on the 16th of September the patriarch 
of Constantinople formally cut off all followers of the 
exarchate as schismatics.^ 

The issue proved that the Turks had miscalculated 
their policy. The Christian cause was not weakened by 
the ecclesiastical severance of Bulgaria ; on the contrary, 
it proved to be strengthened thereby. Schools spread ; 
education advanced ; the revival of Christianity, so long 
dormant and inoperative, but now quick and active, roused 
a spirit of energy and independence. The Porte was 
alarmed, and it showed its terror in the usual way by 
indulging in massacre. Then came the infamous " Bul- 
garian Atrocities," in which 15,000 persons were killed 
in the district of Philippopolis alone, while murders and 
outrages on men, women, and children went on in many 
other places. Mr. Gladstone roused the indignation of 
England and compelled the English government to end its 
shameful protection of Turkey. First Servia, next Eussia 
invaded the Turkish Empire, the latter being completely 

* von Mack, The Bulgarian Exarchate, p. 18. 



OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 351 

victorious after an arduous struggle. In the year 1878 
the treaty of San Stephano granted independence to Bul- 
garia ; but under the influence of Lord Beaconsfield this was 
modified in the treaty of Berlin, held a few months later, 
when Bulgaria was divided into three parts, one of which 
was handed back to Turkey with pledges of protection of 
the Christians by the European powers — pledges which 
have never been effectually fulfilled. The Bulgarian exarch 
now resides at Constantinople.^ 

Macedonia is closely associated with Bulgaria. It 
contains a mixed population of Greeks, Vlachs who repre- 
sent the aboriginal Thracians, Albanians — the old Illyrians, 
Sclavs, Turks, and Bulgarians. Still included within the 
Turkish Empire, the Macedonian Christians are subject to 
the patriarch of Constantinople. But they were pro- 
foundly affected by the Bulgarian revival, which resulted 
in the establishment of bishoprics under the exarch of 
Bulgaria. Thus Macedonia shows a divided ecclesiastical 
allegiance. In the year 1886 a priest named Margaritis 
founded a gymnasium at Monastir on modern principles of 
education. This was done with the approval of the Porte 
and the sympathy of the French Eoman Catholic mission- 
aries, and with some signs of Austrian sympathy also. The 
tendency of such a movement was directly contrary to 
the obscurantism of the patriarch's policy. But it pro- 
voked an educational rivalry on the Greek side, and the 
Greeks under the patriarch also commenced to establish 
schools. 

Servia, of which the original inhabitants were Thracians 
or Illyrians, was known to the Eomans as Mcesia Superior, 
and incorporated by them in the province of lUyricum. It 
was won to Christianity under missionaries sent by the 
Byzantine emperor, Basil n., and thus it became an integral 
part of the orthodox Church. But in the year 1043 
Stephen Bogislav drove out the imperial governors, and 
seven years later his son Michael established the complete 
independence of the country, with himself as king, secur- 

* Silbernagl, p. 89. 



352 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

ing recognition of his sovereignty from the great pope, 
Gregory vil. Hildebrand was always ready to seize on a 
political opportunity of extending the influence of the 
papacy on the borders of the Eastern Church. We have 
here one illustration among many of the interaction of 
State and Church in the mutual relations of the Eastern 
and Western Churches. A people seeking independence 
and out of sympathy with the government at Constan- 
tinople would turn to Eome for aid, and would meet with 
a ready support, because the popes were on the watch for 
opportunities to slip into a province of the Greek Church 
as the protectors of some oppressed race. In this way the 
bad government of the imperial authorities at Constantinople 
led to the alienation of outlying branches of the patriarchate. 
But Servia did not go over to the Latin Church. It now 
became an independent branch of the Greek Church, hold- 
ing anomalous, undefined relations with the main body of 
that Church, its essential union with which, as in other and 
similar cases, was guaranteed by its orthodoxy. One 
hundred years of struggle and two hundred years of power 
and prosperity were followed by the ruin of Servia and the 
death of her king, Lazar, at the battle of Kossovopolje in 
the year 1389, when the country was made tributary to 
the Turks. Its total subjugation was only a matter of 
time, and this was completed in the year 1462 by the 
victorious Mohammed ii., when it became a Turkish vilayet 
ruled by pashas. Servia was now not only groaning under 
the tyrannical rule of the Ottoman government ; she was 
long to be the battle-ground in the wars between Turkey 
and Hungary. After Prince Eugene's victories a portion 
of the country was made over to Austria by the treaty of 
Passarowitz (a.d. 1718) ; but twenty-one years later it was 
recovered by Turkey. At length, in the year 1804, Servia 
attained its liberty in consequence of an insurrection 
headed by the swineherd, Kara Gyorgye (i.e. " Black 
George "). The troubles which overwhelmed Europe during 
the Napoleonic wars furnished the Turks with an oppor- 
tunity to recover some of their lost ground, and they again 



OUTLYING BRANCHES OF THE GREEK CHURCH 353 



took possession of Servia. This advance of Turkey west- 
ward was one of the dangers attending those wars that has 
not been sufficiently appreciated. In Servia the work of 
hberation had to be done over again. On Palm Sunday in 
the year 1815 the Serbs rose and struck for liberty a 
second time, their leader being Milosh Obrenovich. After 
a contest of five years the sultan was compelled to grant 
autonomy. Servia is now an independent kingdom. It 
will be well understood that under these circumstances she 
does not own any allegiance to the patriarch of Constan- 
tinople. In point of fact, the Greek Church in Servia is 
entirely self-governing. It is organised under a synod of 
bishops presided over by the archbishop of Belgrade, who 
is the metropolitan of Servia ; and it is divided into five 
dioceses. There are forty-eight monasteries of the Oriental 
Church in the country. 

The Greek Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina is still 
further removed from the interference of Turkey or the 
Constantinople authorities, since these provinces are now 
under Austrian rule. About one-half of the population is 
of the orthodox Church, the other half being equally 
divided between Eoman Catholics and Mohammedans, 
except that there are some J ews. The orthodox Church — 
while at one with the Greeks in doctrine — is entirely 
self-governing, under four metropolitans. 

A survey of the situation thus produced afifords a 
striking illustration of the essential difference between the 
Eastern and the Western Churches. No such detached, 
independent churches as we see here belonging to the 
orthodox cor^munion would be possible under the papacy.^ 
Eome is most fearful of schism, Constantinople of heresy. 
Eome will nme no dealings with a church that is not 
obedient to the pope; Constantinople will send its chrism 
to a church that does not own allegiance to its patriarch, 
so long as that church is strictly orthodox. Individual 

* Although the popes allow the Oriental Uniats to use their own 
liturgies and to follow many peculiar local customs, this is all in submission 
to the papacy. 

23 



354 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

patriarchs have excommunicated insubordinate bishops — as 
in the case of the Bulgarian exarch. That is only natural ; 
for even patriarchs are men. But the Church as a whole 
admits the Christianity of all the orthodox in its several 
brapches, and the transmission of the holy oil — a thing 
impossible in the West — is a pleasing sign of this admis- 
sion. That is so in spite of many racial quarrels and 
partisan differences, which after all only lie on the surface 
and do not break the bonds of the deep-seated union of the 
holy orthodox Church. 



DIVISION III 



THE EUSSIAN CHUEOH 
— ♦ — 
CHAPTER I 

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 

(a) Nestor, and later Chroniclers ; French translations by 
L. Leger, 1884. 

(6) MoiiraviefF, Hist, of the Russian Church, English trans., 1842 ; 
Ralston, Early Russian History, 1874 ; Morfill, Russia 
("Story of the Nations"), 4th edit., 1890; Histories in 
Russian Language : Karamzin, Ustrialov, Sergius Solo vie v, 
Bestryhev-Riumin, etc. 

After the fall of Constantinople in the year 1453 the 
centre of gravity of Oriental Christianity gradually moves 
northwards. The process is slow, at first imperceptible, 
occupying one or two centuries, and only to be recognised 
as continuous and ultimate by after reflection. Never- 
theless it is now the chief outstanding fact in the history 
of the Eastern Churches. The Sclav supersedes the Greek 
as the dominant race in Eastern Christendom ; Moscow 
takes the primacy so long held by Constantinople ; Russia 
becomes the most important part of the holy orthodox 
Church and the protector of the Christians in the Ottoman 
Empire. 

" The conversion of Russia by the Greek Church," says 

Mr. Hore, " is the mightiest conquest the Christian Church 

has ever made since the time of the apostles." ^ When we 

recollect what the conversion of the Teutonic races has 

> Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodox Greek Church, p. 7. 
8S6 



356 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



meant to Europe and America and the world generally, we 
may hesitate to accept this unqualified assertion. But if 
we confine our attention to the East, it is safe to admit it 
as true within that area. 

The vast area of Europe now known as Eussia is peopled 
mainly by a Sclavonic race belonging to the Indo-Germanic, 
or Aryan, stock, but with a considerable admixture of Fin- 
nish and Scandinavian elements from the north-west, and 
Mongolians from the east. Most of the names that occur 
in the early legendary history are of a Scandinavian type. 
The very name Eussia, formerly traced to the Ehoxolani 
who prove to be an Iranian people, is now generally 
identified with the Finnish Euotsi, the name given by the 
Finns to the Swedes, and is supposed to be a corruption of 
part of a word meaning " rowers " ^ — representing seafaring 
men, Vikings of the north, therefore people who had 
drifted far from the scenes of their ancestry. 

Eussia was late in coming into contact with civilisation. 
The name " Scythian " was vaguely used by the Greeks 
for the people north of the Euxine, but little was known of 
them. The Eussian records begin with the chronicle attri- 
buted to Nestor, a monk born about a.d. 1056, who lived 
at Kiev and died about a.d. 1 1 1 4, so that his time coincides 
with the beginning of the Norman period in England and 
the conquest of the Seljuk Turks in Armenia. He is 
regarded as the Livy or Herodotus of Eussia, the father 
of its history, the writer who collects the legends of 
antiquity and brings the story down to the period of 
authentic history ; but more is attributed to this cele- 
brated monk than is now allowed to be his own work. 
Still Nestor is the first of the chroniclers. Here, then, we 
are more than a thousand years after the time of Christ 
before we come upon any record of Eussian history 

^ Rothsmenn or Rothskarlar. 

2 The earliest date that can be assigned to the first redaction of the 
so-called "Chronicle of Nestor" is a.d. 1000 ; but in its present form it 
cannot be earlier than a.d. 1377, the date of the oldest MS., which was 
written by a monk named Lauren tins in Suzdalj. The questions of the 



THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 357 



Nevertheless the Russian Church claims an apostolic origin. 
Did not Eusebius say that " Andrew received Scythia " ? ^ 
Out of this vague statement has grown the tradition that 
the apostle founded the Church at Kiev, planting the cross 
on the spot where the cathedral now stands. Nestor's 
traditional history of Christianity in Russia only carries 
this back to the end of the ninth century, where we may 
see the actual beginning of the Russian Church. 

According to tradition, the first Russians to embrace 
Christianity were two princes of Kiev, Oskold and Dir, who 
invaded the Byzantine Empire in the year 866, and even 
succeeded in bringing up their warships under the very 
walls of Constantinople, when the patriarch Photius raised 
a storm which wrecked the vessels, by plunging the virginal 
robe of the mother of God into the sea, a miracle which 
resulted in the conversion of the pirates.^ The hymn of 
victory which concludes the office for the first hour in the 
daily matins of the Greek Church is said to celebrate this 
triumph. It is addressed to the Virgin Mary as a victorious 
general.^ The two converts are said to have carried the 
Christian faith back with them to Russia, and to have 
spread it in their dominions. According to Constantino 
Porphyrogenitus, who is followed by other Greek analysts, 
a missionary bishop was sent to the Russians by the emperor 
Basil the Macedonian (a.d. 867—886) and the patriarch 
Ignatius, and made many converts among them. Then 
among the Sees subject to the patriarch of Constantinople 
in Codinus's catalogue the metropolitan See of Russia appears 
as early as the year 891. Further, as in the case of the 
Goths, Sclavs serving in the imperial army adopted the 

origin, sources, and dates of Nestor's chronicle are critically discussed in 
Die Entstehung Der Altesten Hussischen Sogenannten NestorehroniTc, by 
Dr. Stjepan Sakulj, 1896. 

1 Hist. Eccl. iii. 1. 2 Nestor, i. 

' The following are the words of this curious hymn, or rather anthem : 
T]7 hirepfidxf^ (XTpaTriytj} tA viKrjTrjpia, ws XvTpojd^vres tCov deivQp, eiixapicTTTjpLa 
ava'ypd(f>opi.€v oi 8ov\ol (Xov QeoKOKe, 'AW cos '^xovcra rb Kpdros dTrpoa-fidxVTOv, 
iK iravTOLUv rifids Kiv56vo3v iXevdepcoaov 'iva Kpd^tofx^p aot, X'^^P^ vufJL^r} dyv/x(peuTe, 
Ao^a, Kal vdv. 



358 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



religion of the empire. About the year 870, or a little 
earlier, two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, carried 
on successful missionary work among the Sclavonic tribes of 
the Danube in and near Moravia, and translated the Bible, 
or at least part of the New Testament, into the Sclavonic 
language, for which, like Ulfilas with his Gothic version, 
they had to construct an alphabet. This was subsequently 
brought into Eussia, where it helped to further the spread 
of Christianity.^ Thus it would seem that in various ways 
Christianity was penetrating into Eussia during the ninth 
century, although little credence may be given to the 
legends, with their accompanying marvels, which offer to 
describe the process. 

We come upon firmer ground when we reach the 
traditions contained in the chronicle of Nestor concerning 
the introduction of Christianity into Eussia by the Princess 
Olga and her son Vladimir. Eurik, a Norseman who had 
first settled at Novgorod, one of the oldest towns in Eussia, 
followed the course of common migration among his people, 
and travelled in a south-easterly direction till he reached 
Kiev, where he established himself and founded the State 
which subsequently expanded into the Eussian Empire.^ 
Dying in the year 879, Eurik entrusted his son Igor to a 
chieftain named Oleg, who found him a wife in the person 
of Olga. This Princess Olga was the real founder of 
Eussian Christianity. After the death of her husbund she 
ruled his State during the minority of her son Sviatoslaff. 
If we are to accept the story preserved by Nestor we must 
see that Christianity was not then unknown at Kiev, because 
it tells how the princess went to Constantinople for the 
express purpose of learning about the true God ; there she 

* Since the fourteenth century this version has undergone many revisions, 
apparently with the object of modernising it. The oldest MS. of the whole 
Bible is dated a.d. 1499. There are many MSS. of the New Testament of 
widely different recensions, some few as old as the eleventh, or even the 
tenth, century, among which is an Evangelistarium dated 1056. See 
Scrivener, Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament^ 4th edit., 
vol. ii. pp. 158-161. 

^ Nestor, ii 



THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 359 



was baptised by the patriarch Polyeuctes, having the 
emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, for her godfather. 
Olga became famous both for her wisdom and for her 
saintliness. " She was the forerunner of Christianity in 
Kussia," says Nestor, " as the morning star is the precursor 
of the sun and the dawn the precursor of the day. As the 
moon shines at midnight, she shone in the midst of a pagan 
people. She was like a pearl amid dirt, for the people were 
in the mire of their sins and not yet purified by baptism. 
She purified herself in a holy bath, and removed the garb 
of sin of the old man Adam." ^ 

Olga's fierce, warlike son Sviatoslaff never submitted 
to the yoke of Christ; but he so far yielded to his 
mother's influence as to allow the open profession of 
Christianity among his people. In fact, very little per- 
secution attended the introduction of the gospel into 
Eussia, which in this respect was a noble exception to the 
usual experience among pagan nations. The chronicle only 
mentions two Christian martyrs during this period of the 
early evangelising of Kussia, Theodore and John, who were 
put to death by the rage of the people because one of them 
refused to give up his son as a sacrifice to Perun, the 
Sclavonic god of thunder. 

Sviatoslaff was killed in an ambush laid by the Pechenegs, 
a Mongolian tribe who had invaded Eussia, and his skull 
was made into a drinking-cup. Thus perished the last 
pagan prince of the small territory out of which was 
destined to grow the vast empire of Eussia. He had 
foolishly divided his dominion between his three sons, 
whose quarrels soon left only Vladimir, the third son, to 
whom his father had bequeathed Novgorod. This prince 
proved to be a strong man, who not only seized all the 
territory that had been assigned to his brothers, but added 
Galicia or " Eed Eussia." His name is of great importance 
in Church history, because he proved to be the Constantine 
of the Eussian Empire. He not only adopted Christianity 
for himself, but he made it the State religion. Thus almost 

* Nestor, vi 



360 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



from the beginning the Church in Eussia was a State 
Church. 

The traditional story of the conversion of Vladimir 
preserved by the chronicler ^ has the picturesque character 
of an early legend. We must give the first place to the 
influence of his grandmother, the capable and saintly Olga. 
Although she had brought him up in the truth of Christ, 
like Augustine, who had been privileged with the incompar- 
able training of his mother Monica, Vladimir drifted away 
from the early influence when he attained to manhood and 
the absorbing interests of ambition. Still, as we follow the 
tradition, which has nothing improbable in this respect, 
we learn that he was not satisfied with the religion of his 
fathers. It represents how one after the other various 
parties press their religion upon him. First come the 
Mohammedans of Bulgaria, whose regulations he does not 
choose to comply with ; next the Jews, boasting of the 
ancient glory of Jerusalem. " But where is your country ? " 
asks the prince. " It was ruined by the wrath of God for the 
sins of our fathers," they answer. Vladimir will not accept 
the religion of a people whom their Cod has abandoned. 
Then come theologians from Germany with the Eoman 
religion ; but this is rejected as different from the religion 
of Constantinople in which Olga instructed her grandson. 
A philosopher of the Greek faith, the monk Constantine, 
has a better reception as he exposes the defects of other 
religions and eloquently expounds the Christian faith, and 
he is sent away loaded with presents. The story goes on 
to describe the extraordinarily cautious methods further 
employed by Vladimir in the choice of a religion. He 
discusses the question with his council, which decides to send 
commissioners, consisting of boyars — nobles of the highest 
rank — to make their observations of each religion on the 
spot. The authorities at Constantinople see their oppor- 
tunity. The patriarch celebrates the Divine liturgy in 
St. Sophia with the utmost possible magnificence in the 
presence of the awed and astonished visitors from Eussia. 
^ Nestor, viii. 



THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 361 



If this is a genuine tradition it describes a wonderful case 
of open-minded truth-seeking, justly rewarded with success. 

On their return to Kiev the commissioners presented the 
report of the results of their investigations to Vladimir. 
They were not attracted by the Mohammedan worship of 
the Bulgarians, nor did they take to the Latin rites they 
witnessed in Germany. But they brought back a glow- 
ing account of what they had witnessed in the great 
cathedral at Constantinople, saying, " When we stood in the 
temple we did not know where we were, for there is nothing 
else like it upon earth : there in truth God has His dwelling 
with men ; and we can never forget the beauty we saw 
there. No one who has once tasted sweets will afterwards 
take that which is bitter; nor can we now any longer 
abide in heathenism." ^ This was before the sack of 
Constantinople by the Frankish and Venetian brigands in 
the so-called fourth Crusade. St. Sophia was still in its 
pristine glory before the barbarians had stripped it of its 
most magnificent decorations. These astonished ambas- 
sadors from the rude north found themselves in what 
was probably the finest building in the world and certainly 
the richest product of Byzantine art. Wherever they 
turned their eyes they saw gold, silver, precious stones, 
mosaic pictures, covering the whole surface of its walls 
and its wonderful soaring domes, while the elaborate brocaded 
vestments of the priests and the slow moving pomp of the 
service harmonised with the scene of surpassing magni- 
ficence. They were completely conquered. 

It would seem then that where argument had failed 
ceremonial had succeeded, that what the monk had not been 
able to effect by his verbal exposition of doctrine the 
patriarch had triumphantly accomplished by the pomp and 
ceremony of a sumptuous ritual. Perhaps it would be more 
just to say that the emotional impression of the solemn 
service at Constantinople confirmed the intellectual con- 
clusions which had preceded it at Kiev. Be that as it may, 
the fact is not a little significant that a religion which 

1 Ibid. 



362 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

consists so largely, in ceremonies should have been intro- 
duced most effectively into the country of its most ex- 
tensive missionary triumphs under the influence of an 
impressive ceremony. Happily an inducement of a higher 
order is added as the final consideration which decided the 
cautious prince to decide for Christianity. The commis- 
sioners appealed to the memory of his grandmother Olga, 
saying, that if the religion of the Greeks had not been good 
she would not have embraced it. Vladimir was convinced, 
and simply asked, " Where shall we be baptised." 

Another story, if it is more than a saga, does not show 
us his conversion in so pleasing a light. It would appear 
that Vladimir was besieging the Tauric town Cherson, then 
subject to the Greek Empire, when a traitorous priest 
within the walls sent him a note by means of an arrow, 
informing him that the way to take the city was to cut off 
its water supply in the aqueduct. The prince vowed that 
if he succeeded in taking the town he would be baptised, 
for was not his friend the priest a Christian ? He took the 
town and kept his vow. Nevertheless, after his conversion 
Vladimir remained a gross, cruel sensualist, wading through 
blood to debauchery. He must have had great power at 
this time, for he was able to force the Emperor Basil to send 
him Anna, the emperor's sister, for his bride. The princess 
seems to have gone willingly, with the desire of carrying her 
religion into heathen Eussia. Vladimir was both baptised 
and married at Cherson (a.d. 988), after which he restored 
the city to the Greek Empire. Thus again a Christian 
woman sat at the head of the Eussian court and used her 
high influence to bring the people over to her faith. Anna 
had a much better opportunity than Olga. The ruler's 
grandmother had sown the seed; his wife reaped the 
harvest. In the interval of the two generations mis- 
sionaries had been pouring over into Eussia from the 
Byzantine Empire. Thus we may believe that Christianity 
was already working like leaven in the community, slowly 
permeating the mass, before the prince adopted it and pro- 
claimed it as his own and the national religion. This fact 



THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 363 



renders the action of Vladimir entirely different from that 
of Clovis when he forced the Franks to follow him in 
adopting his newly accepted religion. This was indeed 
a great missionary era. It has been reckoned as part of 
the Dark Ages ; but that judgment only applies to Western 
Europe. This period saw the spread of the gospel over 
Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, 
Sweden, Poland, and lastly, to a considerable extent over 
Eussia. 

We must not, therefore, regard it as a mere act of 
subserviency to tyranny, that on the demand of their master 
multitudes of the citizens of Kiev with their wives and 
children flocked to the Dnieper, and there received baptism 
from the Greek priests who had come over to welcome 
them into the Church. Still, the impressiveness and 
sincerity of the scene must have been maimed by the ugly 
uhreat which accompanied the prince's invitation, for he 
had issued a proclamation on the day before the ceremony, 
that " whoever, on the morrow, should not repair to the 
river, whether rich or poor, he should hold him for an 
enemy." 

The acceptance of Christianity by Vladimir and his 
people from Constantinople opened the way for intercom- 
munication between Eussia and the Byzantine Empire. 
Commerce followed the gospel. Art and culture came in 
its train. A Christian civilisation now began to spread 
slowly through Eussia. The consequence was that in the 
course of the next century this country, which we are 
now accustomed to think of as the most backward of 
European nations, became more advanced than Germany 
or even France. She took a foremost place in the early 
part of the Middle Ages. Byzantine culture was now at 
its height and incomparably superior to the rude condition 
of the Western nations ; and Eussia now came in for a 
share of this rich civilisation. This was seen most evidently 
in the erection of churches, which Vladimir zealously carried 
on throughout the towns and villages of his dominions. 
Like Eameses ii. in Eygpt, like Hadrian and Constantine and 



364 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

Justinian in the Koman Empire, Vladimir gave himself 
enthusiastically to building operations, and left his mark on 
his country for all time in the lasting records of public 
architecture. His first building was th^ church of St. Basil 
at Kiev, planted on the very mound that had formerly been 
sacred to the god Perun, and from which the national 
deity's image had been hurled down in the enthusiasm of 
the popular conversion. These churches were all of the 
Byzantine order, although subsequently the style was 
Orientalised, being modified under Persian, and much more 
under Mongolian influences, to which are to be attributed 
its characteristic bulbous domes. 

But Vladimir was more than a church builder. He 
saw that his churches were supplied with priests ; he also 
established schools and eagerly promoted the education of 
the children of the boyars. The bishops, not less zealous 
in pushing forward their missionary enterprises, penetrated 
into the interior of Eussia as far as the cities of Post off and 
Novgorod, so that Christianity was rapidly spread over a 
considerable area of Eussia. This however must be regarded 
as little more than the scattering of seed broadcast. More- 
over, seeing that it was done in some degree as a measure 
of State policy, it must have been characterised at first by 
the superficiality which is always seen in missionary work 
carried on with the aid of this tempting but delusive assist- 
ance. Neither Constantine, nor Clovis, nor Vladimir could 
really convert a nation by court influence. 

This new Christian movement in Eussia, which had 
originated in Constantinople, continued for a considerable 
time to look to the Greek capital for its sustenance and 
guidance. Michael, a Syrian by birth, is reckoned the first 
metropolitan in Eussia ; he died before the cathedral at 
Kiev was completed, and was succeeded by a Greek named 
Leontius, whom the patriarch of Constantinople had 
appointed. In the year 993, Leontius solemnly conse- 
crated the building, and Vladimir celebrated the occasion 
by making a grant to the Church out of all dues and 
fines, customs and taxes, crops and cattle throughout his 



THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 365 



dominion.^ For this reason the cathedral was called " The 
Church of the Tithes." ^ The care of the building and the 
charge of the funds were entrusted to the priest Anastasius, 
whom Vladimir had brought from Cherson. From Greece 
also came the canons of the councils and the Greek laws for 
Church government. But from the first it was maintained 
that the Scriptures constituted the basis of Christian life 
and doctrine ; and encouragement was given to the reading 
and study of the Bible. This characteristic of the Greek 
Church in contradistinction from the Eoman passed over 
into the Eussian Church, and is one of its happiest features, 
Vladimir distinctly promised in his edict of the tithes 
— which might be called the Magna Charta or the " Bill of 
Eights " of the Eussian Church — that neither he nor any 
of his descendants shall ever cite members of the clergy, 
their wives, monks or nuns, before the State tribunals, or 
usurp the judicial power which has been conceded to the 
Church. After enumerating a list of offences which he 
leaves the Church to deal with — such as divorce, poisoning, 
witchcraft, heresy, family wrongs — he adds : " In all these 
cases the Church is to pass judgment ; but the prince and 
his boyars and judges shall not take cognisance of such 
judicial matters. These ecclesiastical privileges I have 
accorded to the holy bishops, in compliance with the 
decisions of the Church, and the seven oecumenical 
councils."^ Most of this only applies to clerical offenders. 
In the case of a judicial matter between an ecclesiastic and 

^ Modern missionary work, being voluntary and resting on free-will offer- 
ings, is frequently crippled for lack of funds. When one enquires how the 
missionary activity of earlier times was maintained various answers have to 
be given. Most of the evangelisation of the West was carried on by monks 
whose wants were supplied by their own monasteries, or who worked for bare 
subsistence in their new homes or accepted gifts from their converts. But 
under State religions State funds supported the work. This was the case in 
Russia. Of course government support had to be paid for in government 
control, although this was subject to a distinct right of the Church to 
administer its own canon law. 

2 Dessatingya. 

^ A copy of the edict, contained in a codex of the thirteenth century, 
is given in full by Mouravieff, Hist., Notes, pp. 357, 358. 



366 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



a layman the tribunal is to be mixed, partly civil and partly 
ecclesiastical. Further, the State shall interfere to punish 
anybody who infringes the judicial rights of the Church. 

Here then we see a Church established by the civil 
authority, endowed with State funds, privileged to govern 
itself and discipline its clergy and other ecclesiastical persons, 
and granted immunity from interference in the exercise 
of its rights and privileges. As yet there was no idea of 
the supremacy of the head of the State in the govern- 
ment of the Church, such as has subsequently come about 
in the person of the tsar. Vladimir's edict ofifered the 
Kussian Church greater freedom than the Greek Church 
enjoyed under the Byzantine emperors. Everything de- 
pended on the degree of respect shown to the spirit as well 
as to the letter of this fundamental charter of the Church. 
Now it became customary for the bishop of each district to 
be selected by the prince of that district. Theoretically 
that was not in accordance with canon law ; and practically 
it gave great power to the civil governor, who of course 
would be likely only to nominate a candidate who was 
persona grata to himself. Then every bishop had the right 
to appoint the priests, deacons, and inferior church officers 
in his diocese, and also the archimandrites (i.e. the abbots 
and abbesses) of the religious houses. Thus a firm hand was 
kept on the personnel of the Church, even though liberty 
was granted it in the exercise of its guaranteed functions. 

In the pursuit of his missionary enterprises the metro- 
politan Leontius formed five dioceses — the first five in 
Eussia — namely, Chernigoff, near Kiev, Novgorod in the 
north, Belgrod and Vladimir far in the north-east, and 
Eostoff still farther off in the same direction. These were 
not equally successful. At the ancient city of Novgorod, 
from which the ruling family had migrated to Kiev, 
Joachim of Cherson, the newly appointed bishop, was able 
to take the daring action of throwing the statue of the 
national god Perun into the river, without meeting any 
opposition on the part of the inhabitants.^ On the other 

* Nestor, viii. 



THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 367 



hand, the first two bishops of Eostoff were driven away by 
the fierce tribes from the surrounding forests. Now, as on 
other occasions, we find the most enHghtened people and 
those most in touch with the central life of the nation 
quickest to receive the new message, while the remote 
inhabitants of lonely places — the " heath-men," as our 
ancestors called them — are slowest to abandon their pagan 
habits. 

Vladimir repeated his father's mistake in dividing his 
territory among his sons, with the same disastrous conse- 
quences. The result was that his death in the year 1015 
was followed by a period of disorder. In the end the 
supreme power was secured by Yasolaf, the eldest son, 
who had received Novgorod in his father's partition. He 
appeared as the avenger of his two brothers Boris and 
Gled, who, it is said, had been murdered by another brother 
Sviatopolk while in the act of prayer, so that they have 
come to be honoured in the Church ais Christian martyrs. 
Sviatopolk had seized Kiev ; but Yasolaf succeeded in 
driving him into exile, and so came into possession of the 
southern capital. He ruled as a Christian prince, and his 
name is famous as that of the founder of the Eussian code 
of laws.^ His long reign was prosperous, and it saw a 
continuous spread of missionary activity throughout his 
dominions. Yasolaf not only confirmed the charter of 
rights which his father had conferred on the Church ; he 
went further, and granted ecclesiastical personages exemp- 
tion from all civil duties and payments. This was in 
accordance with precedents set by Constantine and Con- 
stantius in the Eoman Empire. He took a personal 
interest in the study and translation of Greek Church 
writers, of whose works he collected a library at Kiev. At 
the same time he established schools for the training of 
candidates for the clerical office at the two chief towns- — 
Kiev and Novgorod. Like his father, Yasolaf distinguished 
himself and immortalised his name by church building. 
Earlier in this reign a prince named Mistislief built 
1 Known as Husskaya Pravada (Eussian Law). 



368 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

St. Saviour's Church at Chernigoff. This is reckoned 
the oldest church now standing in Kussia. Yasolaf 
himself put up at Kiev the metropolitan cathedral, 
v^^hich he named St. Sophia, after Justinian's glorious 
temple, the ideal of all Greek and Eussian churches. His 
son Vladimir built a second church of St. Sophia in 
Novgorod. Thus Eussia had two modest copies of the 
famous Byzantine basilica — one in each of his capitals. 
The metropolitan Theopemptus — the first Eussian metro- 
politan named by Nestor — came to consecrate the Kiev 
St. Sophia. On his death (a.d. 1051) occurred the first 
ecclesiastical breach with Constantinople. There had been 
war between the governments, in the course of which the 
Byzantine emperor, Constantine Monomachus, the third 
husband of the notorious Zoe, had put out the eyes of some 
Eussian prisoners. Indignant at the cruel outrage, Yasolaf 
summoned the Eussian bishops to elect a metropolitan 
from among themselves without reference to the patriarch 
of Constantinople, and they chose Hilarion, a peace-loving 
man of devout character, who was the first to move for 
reconciliation by seeking the benediction of Michael 
Cerularius the patriarch. This was granted, and thus the 
brief division between the two branches of the Eastern 
Church, the cause of which had been in no way ecclesi- 
astical, was healed. The result of the reconciliation 
was a still closer connection between Constantinople and 
Eussia. The patriarch's authority was being curtailed and 
crippled in the south by the inroads of the Turks and by 
the distracted condition of the Byzantine Empire, followed 
by attempts of emperors to effect union with Eome and 
the Western Church simply on political grounds, in order 
to obtain aid in withstanding the serious danger now 
menacing the empire. At this very time a vast new pro- 
vince of Christendom was opening up in the north and 
gratefully submitting itself to his rule. It looked as though 
what he was losing so disastrously in the old regions of the 
Eastern Church was about to be counterbalanced by splendid 
acquisitions of missionary achievements, first in Bulgaria, 



THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA 369 



but afterwards and much more effectually in Eussia. For 
some time this really was the case, and the See of the 
patriarch of Constantinople became more extensive than it 
had been for many years. Thus, while the emperors were 
losing ground till they were at their wits' end to see how to 
retain their throne, the patriarchs were actually gaining new 
provinces and rising in importance among the churches 
of the East. But the prospect soon darkened. During one 
century Eussia was torn with internal dissensions, and the 
next century saw her devastated by a disastrous Mongolian 
invasion. By the time when she recovered and the Church 
was again in a flourishing condition, great changes had 
taken place at Constantinople. The Latin kingdom and 
its sham patriarchate had come and gone. Meanwhile a 
foundation was being slowly laid for a new patriarchate 
at Moscow, and so at length for the supremacy of Eussia 
over the orthodox Church. 

Brilliant as were the missionary achievements of this 
early period, it must not be supposed that Eussia was 
completely Christianised throughout the length and breadth 
of her vast territory. The new movement was chiefly 
confined to the towns, and there principally carried on 
among the more intelligent classes. The mass of the people 
long remained in heathen darkness even after the State 
had provided them with a church, to which they were forced 
to submit outwardly while they knew little of the vital 
character and spirit of the gospel of Christ. Virtually the 
same heathenism has clung to the peasants in combination 
with their ignorant notions of Christianity right down to our 
own day. It is only by recognising this significant fact that 
we can account for the grotesque J)henomena presented by 
some of the sects. These phenomena are the products of an 
amalgam of ancient Sclavonic heathenism with perverted 
notions of Christianity. In the twelfth century Christian 
marriage was only practised by the upper classes. The 
lower classes still continued to follow their old pagan 
rites. When schools were established by the State and an 
attempt was made to compel the attendance of the children, 
24 



370 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



their parents wept, regarding literature as a dangerous 
kind of sorcery. 

On the other hand, the leaven was working from the 
first, and some good results were to be seen throughout 
the population as a whole even in early times. Polygamy 
was abolished. The virtues of hospitality and philanthropy 
were recognised. Vladimir Monomachus wrote to his son : 
" It is neither fasting, nor solitude, nor the monastic life 
that will procure you eternal life. It is beneficence. 
Never forget the poor. Nourish them. Do not bury your 
riches in the bosom of the earth. That is contrary to the 
precepts of Christianity. Serve as father to the orphans, 
judge to the widows. Put to death neither innocent nor 
guilty ; for nothing is more sacred than the life and the 
soul of a Christian." 

There grew up in Eussia a curious parallel to the 
custom of clinical baptism in the earlier days of the Church 
in the Eoman Empire, as in the case of the deathbed 
baptism of Constantine the Great. It became customary 
for Eussian princes to take the tonsure in the article of 
death. The tsars would smooth their passage to paradise 
by dying as monks. 

The only literature known in Eussia during these early 
times was religious or ecclesiastical, consisting of the Bible, 
the Fathers — especially St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, and 
lives of the saints ; but some philosophy and so-called 
science were introduced. The romance of Barlaam and 
Josaphat was popular in Eussia, as elsewhere tliroughout 
Christendom, in the early Middle Ages. 



CHAPTER II 



THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 
(Books named in Chapter I.) 

The history of the foundation and establishment of the 
Church in Eussia must be read with caution, since it rests 
on legends and traditions from one or two centuries before 
the age of the first chronicles. But in the year 1073, 
Nestor, the traditional father of Eussian history, came to 
the monastery at Kiev.^ From this time onwards there 
are contemporary records. Nestor's own chronicle is con- 
tinued to A.D. 1113, and it is followed by other chronicles. 
At this point, therefore, we pass from more or less un- 
certain popular stories of the early Church in Eussia to 
documentary evidence. 

At this very time we also enter on a gloomy period of 
Eussian history, consisting of two troublous centuries — first, 
the twelfth century, when Eussia was torn with internecine 
strife ; second, the thirteenth century, when she was swept 
and scoured and bled almost to death by a wave of invasion 
of Tartar tribesmen from the steppes of central Asia. 

In the midst of the petty quarrels of the princelings 
who checked the progress of their country by their 
ambitions and jealousies, the Church had its own difficulties 
to contend with. The metropolitan George, who had 
been appointed in the year 1072, was a man of a gentle, 
timorous disposition, and he retired to Constantinople feel- 
ing unequal to his task in face of the troubles of the times. 
The Church was now dragged into the vortex of political 

^ Nestor, x. 
871 



372 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



affairs. The Prince Isyaslaff had been twice driven from 
Kiev by his brothers, when he turned for help to the 
emperor, Henry iv., and Borislaff, King of Poland. Now 
Poland was in the Eoman Church, and more than once this 
country was used by the papal party as their point of 
attack on the Eussian Church. At this time the most 
powerful of all the popes, Gregory vii., was dominating the 
councils of the West. Isyaslaff sought the great pope's 
intercession with the two sovereigns. Gregory's reply has 
been preserved among his letters.^ It is most gracious. 
He has received Isyaslaff's son, who has come with the 
petition, and who, as the pope says, has admitted the papal 
authority, and wishes to have the kingdom as a grant from 
Peter through the pope, asserting that he makes this request 
with his father's full authority.^ Here is Hildebrand's 
high claim to have the disposal of thrones and kingdoms 
in his hands, and his distinct assertion that it is admitted 
by the son of the Prince of Eussia, with his father's de- 
liberate consent. We should like to have had the young 
man's version of the story. It looks as though he had 
been as wax in the hands of the masterful ruler of empires. 
If it were indeed the case that he made this complete sub- 
mission on behalf of Isyaslaff, we cannot imagine that the 
bargain would have been kept ; if the prince had secured 
his throne by the help of a foreign alliance on such terms 
as these, he could only have held it as a tyrant against the 
wishes of his people. Fortunately he was able to regain 
his position without the aid he had solicited from abroad ; 
and as he did not have occasion to claim his side of the 
bargain, we are not surprised that we hear no more about 
the other side. This was the first serious attempt of the 
papacy to obtain the great prize of Eussia for the see of 
Peter. 

Of the next metropolitan, John ii., who was appointed 

1 Baronius's Annals, tome xi. p. 472. 

2 *' Filius vester limina apostolorum visitans ad nos venit, et quod regnum 
illud dono Sancti Petri per manus nostras vellet obtinere, eidem beato Petro 
Apostolorum Principi debita fidelitate exhibita," etc. 



THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 373 



in the year 1080, Nestor, who was his contemporary, 
exclaims, " There will never be his like again in Eussia." 
A learned, charitable, courteous, humble man, he holds 
a conspicuous place among the early bishops of Kiev. 
Another metropolitan, Nicolas, came forward as a peace- 
maker at a time of civil war, when Monomachus, a young 
prince who had married the daughter of Harold, the last 
Saxon king of England, was besieging Isyaslaff's son, Sviato 
polk, at Kiev. A little later, when Monomachus had the 
upper hand, he was supported by an enlightened and 
eloquent metropolitan, Nicephorus. 

In spite of repeated feuds and frequent disorders in 
the political world, quiet missionary work was still going 
on. From Polotsk the gospel now began to spread into 
Lithuania ; from Novgorod it was carried farther north, 
and Moscow was founded as the result of an effort to con- 
vert the heathen in central Eussia and introduce them to 
the civilisation of town life. The one bond of union during 
these troublous times was the Church with its common 
faith and life, and the chief ministers of peace were bishops 
and heads of monasteries. It was fortunate that the 
Church herself was not now divided. When a differ- 
ence of opinion did arise from time to time, usually it turned 
on some minor point and proved to be only of a transient 
character. Towards the end of the twelfth century we 
meet with a temporary breach with Constantinople, which 
indicates the awakening of national jealousy. Eussia was 
still being supplied with metropolitans from the Greek 
Church, when a second Isyaslaff, the grandson of Mono- 
machus, determined to have a Eussian for his chief bishop, 
urged it is said by dissatisfaction with the conduct of the 
deceased metropolitan, Michael, in absenting himself from 
Eussia. Accordingly he followed the example of Yasolaff 
and summoned a synod of Eussian bishops at Kiev to elect 
a successor to Michael. The only protest was raised by 
Niphont, bishop of Novgorod. All the other bishops 
acquiesced in the daring act of innovation. It was in 
vain that Niphont appealed to their written promise not to 



374 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



celebrate the liturgy in the church of St. Sophia as a synod 
while they were without a metropolitan. He was silenced 
by a temporary imprisonment in the Pechersky Monastery, 
and the synod elected Clement, a monk of Smolensk. But 
how could he be ordained without applying to the patriarch 
at Constantinople ? Here was a serious difificulty. The 
bishops found a way out of it by an ingenious device. In 
place of the imposition of the patriarch's hand, they laid on 
the candidate's head the reputed hand of St. Clement of 
Eome, which was among the precious relics that Vladimir 
had brought from Cherson. At a time when the corpses 
and bones of saints were valued as the greatest of treasures 
and credited with marvellous powers, such a use of the 
shrivelled hand of one of the most venerated successors of 
an apostle might be regarded as singularly effi cations. A 
curious feature of the incident is that the dead hand of a 
bishop of Eome is used to flout the claims of the bishop of 
the rival city of Constantinople. The quarrel lasted for 
nine years. It got entangled with the civil feuds, which 
were so fierce that one prince, Igor, who had been sent 
to a monastery, was torn to pieces by the populace when 
he reappeared in the city of Kiev. Soon after this the 
Prince Isyaslaff was forced to flee, taking Clement with 
him. Meanwhile Niphont was despatched to Constanti- 
nople to seek a duly appointed metropolitan. The 
patriarch Luke was only too glad to comply with so 
loyal a request, and he consecrated a man named Con- 
stantine as bishop of Chernigoff, and despatched him with 
all due qualifications to Kiev (a.d. 1136). Constantine 
proceeded to act with vigour in his new office, condemn- 
ing the deeds of the unfortunate Isyaslaff and his metro- 
politan, Clement, and even suspending for a time all the 
clergy whom Clement had ordained. Thus apparently 
Eussia was again brought into ecclesiastical submission to 
Constantinople. Niphont, who had stood out as a solitary 
Elijah among the priests of Baal, an Abdiel in the midst 
of the all but universal rebellion, did not live to reach Kiev 
and enjoy his triumph. But he had earned an undying 



THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 375 



reputation in the orthodox Church, where he is reckoned 
among the saints as the " Defender of all Eussia." 

A turn in the wheel of fortune brought back the opposite 
party into power. Then Constantine was dismissed to his 
original see, where he ended his days, ordering in his will 
that his body should be cast out of the town as unworthy 
of burial. After it had been thus exposed for three days, 
it was buried with due honours in the church of St. Saviour. 
We may doubt whether the poor man's singular command 
should be attributed, as Mouravieff says, to " extraordinary 
humility," ^ or to a melancholy sense of failure after his 
ambitious mission had begun so successfully. 

Meanwhile, of course, the patriarch did not recognise 
Clement, who had been restored by the government and so 
had renewed the schism. Constantine was no longer avail- 
able. Accordingly Luke appointed a third metropolitan, 
Theodore. Andrew Bogolubsky, one of the contending 
princes, wished him to make his own city of Vladimir the 
metropolitan see. He had built there the magnificent 
church of the Mother of God and deposited in it a miracle- 
working icon brought from Greece. If he had succeeded 
his daring policy might have cut the knot. Kiev would 
have been left high and dry with its discredited metro- 
politan, while the tide of Church favour flowed to the new 
ecclesiastical metropolis. But Luke was too wise to agree 
to the proposal. It would have meant a serious division in 
the Eussian Church, not only between two parties, but 
between two great cities and their surrounding areas. 
Local ambition would then have been roused ; and thus 
the schism would have been perpetuated long after any 
excuse for it had died away. All that the patriarch would 
do to honour the city of Vladimir was to allow the bishop 
of Eostoff to make it his centre, and sanction an annual 
festival in celebration of the prince's victory over the 
Bulgarians on the same day as that on which the Emperor 
Manuel celebrated his victory over the Saracens, a festival 
ytill observed on the first of August. 

1 P. 37. 



376 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



But now the schism which had sprung out of personal 
and political sources was complicated with a charge of 
heresy. This charge is significant of much in the life of 
the orthodox Church during the Middle Ages. We are 
familiar with the grave accusation of heresy and its terrible 
consequences in the Western Church ; but there it meant 
some serious departure from what were deemed great 
and vital elements of the creed. No such thing was 
seen in the case of the Eussian heresy of the twelfth 
century. The Church was universally and securely settled 
in its faith. It had not sufficient originality of mind or 
intellectual interest to dream of loosening its moorings and 
entering on unknown seas of speculation. The daring 
heresiarchs of the East who have left their marks for all 
time on the course of the world's thought belong to the 
patristic period ; those met with later are of the Western 
Church. The word heresy has shrunk to much narrower 
limits within the safe orthodoxy of the later Greek and 
Eussian Church. Nestor, the bishop of Eostoff, who had 
been deprived of his diocese by the metropolitan Con- 
stantino, went to the Byzantine capital to defend his 
case and vindicate his rights. There he was met with 
a charge of heresy. The heresy was this, that he had 
forbidden people to break their Wednesday or Friday fasts 
even when the festivals of the Nativity and Epiphany 
fell on those days. The irregularity did not begin with 
Nestor, nor was he the only promoter of it. It was 
revived by a bishop named Leon, who had come into 
his diocese during his absence. Leon was first tried by 
the metropolitan at Kiev, and then at Constantinople by 
the patriarch. But the heresy was not crushed. It 
appeared at Kiev in the person of the metropolitan 
Constantine ii., who adopted it in all innocence and 
convoked a synod to establish it ; but he was opposed 
by two valiant champions of sound doctrine with re- 
gard to feasts and fasts, Cyril, bishop of Touroff, and 
Polycarp, archimandrite of the great Pechersky Monastery 
and continuator of Nestor's Lives of the Saints. This 



THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 377 



man even suffered imprisonment for his fidelity in the 
matter. 

Subsequently, in the course of the never-ending discords 
of these times, Kiev was taken by storm and visited with 
all the horrors of a sacked city. The orthodox Church 
regarded this as Heaven's just punishment for the heresy of 
her metropolitan. So ruinous was the disaster that the 
post of metropolitan remained vacant for about ten years, 
after which the city had sufficiently revived for a re- 
storation of its ecclesiastical functions, and the patriarch 
of Constantinople then appointed a Greek, Nicephorus ii. 
(a.d. 1185). But the storm-cloud which had rolled back 
for an interval soon gathered again, and Kiev was captured 
and sacked a second time, a fate from which she never 
recovered. Her ruin followed sixteen years later in the 
Mongol invasion. This ends the first period in Eussian 
Church history. Hitherto Kiev had been the metropolis 
both of the State and of the Chui'ch, though sharing some 
of the honour with the older capital in the north, Novgorod. 
After her own civil wars and the cataclysm of the Asiatic 
invasion this was no longer the case. 

The internal disorders of the twelfth century were 
followed in the thirteenth century by the infinitely greater 
disaster of the Mongol invasion. This was part of a vast 
movement that was sweeping up from Central Asia and 
threatening to engulf Europe in a sea of barbarism. The 
Mongols were of the same race as those devastating 
invaders known as the Huns, who had brought terror to 
Eome at an earlier period. But in course of time they 
became Mohammedans, the religion of the Prophet having 
passed on through Persia to the wild tribes of the region 
since known as Turkestan. Therefore we might regard 
their progress as that of the right wing of the vast army 
of Islam which was advancing in half-moon formation, and 
closing in upon the civilised world all round its limits 
from Eussia to Spain. But this Mongol invasion had 
really no. relations with the movements of the Moors in 
Africa and the West ; it was the greatest of a series of 



378 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



volcanic outbursts of wild peoples ' from the steppes of 
Asia. The terrible leader Genghis ^ Khan — " Chief of 
Chiefs" — became one of the world conquerors and empire 
founders whom we might compare with Alexander the 
Grreat, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon, if only he had added 
more constructive genius to his military gifts and powers. 
At first the Eussians appeared able to offer effectual re- 
sistance, and they gave the Mongol host a temporary check 
at the Kalka (a.d. 1224). But it was not long before 
the pent-up forces burst forth and carried all before them. 
First Vladimir was taken; then Kiev fell. Still, on 
marched the host, northwards as far as Novgorod, west- 
wards absorbing Hungary, then peopled by a kindred race, 
the descendants of an earlier invasion, but now Christian. 
The invasion was only stopped at the frontier of Poland 
and Germany. By the end of the century the vast Mongol 
Empire extended from China to the borders of these 
countries of central Europe, covering all northern Asia and 
eastern Europe. The occupation of Eussia lasted for 
three centuries. 

It is not easy to imagine the enormous significance 
of this central fact in Eussian history. The Mongol 
occupation cut that history in two, with the result that 
the second period, the period that follows the dismal 
gap of national effacement, differs in many serious re- 
spects from the earlier period, with which we were con- 
cerned in the previous chapter. The tendency of modern 
historians is to make less of this fact than was formerly 
assumed. Eussian writers in particular are anxious to 
vindicate their country from a charge of having adopted 
Mongolian habits.^ It seems clear that some of the 
Oriental customs which were practised by the Eussians 
were due to the influence of Constantinople rather than 
to the effect of the Mongol invasion. For instance, 
there was a strict seclusion of women in the court of the 

^ Mr. Morfill spells the name Dcliingish. M. Leroy Beaulieu spells it 
Djinghiz. 

^ e.g. Soloviev, the historian, , 



THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 379 



Byzantine Empire, which was imitated when Eussia came 
under Byzantine influences, and therefore must not be 
attributed to Mohammedanism. Then the Sclavonic is 
certainly still the basal element in Kussian life, as it 
always has been. Moreover, the Mongols had not the 
Eoman genius for ruling. They let the local Eussian 
princes govern their territories though subject to the 
supremacy of the " horde," wherever this moving army 
might be. Novgorod, isolated by its marshes and the 
barrenness of its neighbourhood, was left almost to itself 
in virtual independence. We must not regard the 
Mongols as a mere plague of locusts eating up everything 
they came across. 

Nevertheless, after due allowance is made for these 
mitigating circumstances, the fact remains that the Mongol 
invasion left lasting effects on the national life of Eussia. 
Many Eussian princes married daughters of the Mongols. 
Later on, a nobleman of Mongolian origin, Boris Godunov, 
was elected tsar. Even in dress the influence of the 
Mongols was felt, and Eussians adopted from them the 
long flowing robe known as the " caftan." A less pardon- 
able Mongolian import was the knout, that horrible instru- 
ment of torture, the use of which was continued till the 
reign of Alexander I., and has been revived in the prisons of 
to-day. From the same source came the public flogging of 
debtors, which was subsequently abolished by Peter the 
Great. But the chief result of the Mongol invasion was 
that it cut Eussia off from the West, and made it more and 
more an Eastern country. In the previous period Eussia 
liad belonged to the comity of European nations. It has 
been already remarked that her civilisation was then superior 
to that of France and Germany.^ She was joined with 
Constantinople in the van of progress. But the Mongolian 
invasion put an end to this state of affairs. For the time 
being all national life seemed to be crushed. A cringeing 
attitude was forced on princes and people. The princes 
were compelled to travel to the horde — the movable court 

ip. 363. 



380 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



and camp of the khan — for their investiture, and to submit 
to its authority whenever it chose to interfere with them. 
To the horde they had to pay their tribute. Even at home 
they were hampered by the presence of residents called 
" bask^ks." That thirteenth century, which is to us a very 
golden age — the age of St. Francis and the friars and the 
awakening of democratic religion throughout the West — 
the age of early English architecture and cathedral build- 
ing — the age of the great English king Edward i. and the 
rise of the House of Commons — the age of Dante and the 
origin of modern literature — the age of Giotto and Era 
Angelico and the beginnings of modern painting — this was 
in Eussia the darkest of ages, the age of oppression and 
stagnation and misery. Eussia had shared with Constanti- 
nople the glories of the earlier period, when the rest of 
Europe was abandoned to the barbarism which followed 
the break-up of the Eoman Empire, and which we have been 
taught to call the Dark Ages. Now the case was completely 
reversed. The darkness lifted from the West, and a brilliant 
day dawned in England, France, and Italy ; at the same 
time the darkness settled down on Eussia — just when the 
abominable " Latin Empire " was filling Constantinople and 
the Eastern Church with gloom and misery. 

This national calamity of Eussia could not but have 
a profound effect on the Church and the course of her 
life during the period of trial. Here the first thing 
to observe is that the Mongols, even after they became 
Mohammedans, did not persecute the Christians in Eussia. 
That country was still the land least stained with the 
blood of martyrs. It was when she began to persecute 
her own sons whom she reckoned heretics, the members 
of the various prohibited sects, that this cruelty became 
common in Eussia. The Mongols permitted the Christians 
to enjoy their religion freely and to conduct its public 
services. The khans even protected the Church from attack, 
and exempted its property from confiscation. But this 
very fact had its peculiar influence, especially when it was 
combined with the political factors of the case. Eussia 



THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 381 



was now cut off from Constantinople. Like the prince, 
the metropolitan had to go to the horde for investiture. 
He, too, was required to cringe before the great khan. 
Then the Church centre was removed first to Vladimir, 
and afterwards to Moscow, which was quite out of reach 
from Constantinople. Ecclesiastically this is one of the 
most important results of the Mongol invasion. As 
regards the internal affairs of the Church, it meant 
independence. The Eussian metropolitan was no longer 
subject to the patriarch of Constantinople. Thus the 
Eussian Church became free from Greek control. This 
was one stage in the progress of her importance, to be 
followed later by her primacy in the holy orthodox 
Church, with the tsar as its head and protector. 

A further consequence of the Moslem invasion is that 
from this time onwards religion and patriotism blend. It 
is like the union of the Eoman Catholic Church in Ireland 
with the Nationalist party. In some measure this result 
was brought about by the forced severance of connection 
with Constantinople. Hitherto the Church in Eussia had 
been in some respects an exotic growth. Her metro- 
politans had been Greeks, appointed by the patriarch of 
Constantinople, despatched as foreign missionaries by this 
ecclesiastic of another country, not always even knowing 
the language of the people over whom they were imposed 
as their chief pastors. But after the Mongol conquest the 
metropolitans were Eussians elected by native Eussian 
bishops. Then, in the second place, the common misery 
of the alien yoke drove the Church along the same way as 
the nation, or rather awoke national instincts in connection 
with religion, and made the religious leaders ardent patriots. 
Thus, through these two influences, the Mongol invasion 
Eussianised the Church in Eussia. 

It is more difficult to penetrate beneath the surface and 
discover how far the interests of religion itself were affected 
by this huge cataclysm ; but it would seem that in some 
respects the trial was a stimulus to faith. In their desola- 
tion and wretchedness the people felt the need of religion. 



382 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Certain fascinating and exciting forms of religion are always 
found to flourish under such circumstances. The Jewish 
oppression under Antiochus Epiphanes, and again under the 
Komans, gave rise to apocalypses which painted the future 
in glowing colours for the people of God, but threatened 
doom for their oppressors. Similarly, during the Mongol 
oppression new prophecies were published and eagerly 
devoured ; people saw strange visions ; icons were un- 
usually active in working miracles. At this time too a 
great impulse was given to monasticism. No doubt there 
was much poverty, for trade must have been terribly dis- 
organised, and other miseries besides hunger drove multi- 
tudes into the monasteries. Many sought the calm seclusion 
of the monastic life simply because it was more congenial 
to their devotional temperament. But monasteries which 
were planted in remote and secluded places for the sake 
of the retirement sought by their inmates became centres 
of missionary activity. Thus Eussia repeated the experi- 
ence of Germany in an earlier age. 

The consequence was that this very time, when the 
normal development of the Eussians in civilisation and 
secular progress was checked and thrown back, Christianity 
was being spread farther afield in outlying regions of 
northern and eastern Europe by Eussian monks. In the 
East the far-off place called Great Perm, near the Ural 
Mountains, formerly only visited by fur-hunters, was now 
both Christianised and won to Eussia by the labours of a 
single monk, bearing the common monastic name Stephen. 
All alone he penetrated the forests, and, though opposed 
by the pagan priests, succeeded in winning a body of 
converts, for whom he built a rude church on the bank 
of the river Viuma. The metropolitan consecrated him 
bishop of Perm, where he laboured for many years ; he 
retired to Moscow in his old age. Eudocia, or Eupraxia 
according to her name in the convent, founded the convent 
of the Ascension in the Kremlin ; St. Euphemius established 
the celebrated monastery of the Saviour at Souzdal ; St. 
Cyril founded the monastery of Bielo-ozero, one of the most 



THE MONGOLIAN INVASION OF RUSSIA 383 



famous of all Eussian monasteries. At first simply seeking 
for a retreat like St. Anthony in the desert, Cyril retired to 
the lonely shores of the White Lake ; but his fame spread, 
and companions gathered about him peopling the solitude with 
lives dedicated to the service of religion. Here the traveller 
to-day sees a monastery of the first class, surrounded by 
two strong walls flanked by lofty towers, and armed with 
cannons. The enclosure contains two monasteries, a greater 
and a lesser. The greater monastery lies between the 
inner and the outer walls ; it has nine churches built of 
stone. The lesser monastery is within the second wall. 
This monastery is said to possess the richest treasures of 
gold- embroidered and jewelled vestments in the empire. 
In earlier days it earned a more laudable reputation, for 
then it was a centre of missionary activity in still more 
remote regions. One of its offsprings is the Solovetsky 
Monastery, which is built on one of a cluster of islands 
lying out north of the bay of Onega in the White Sea. 
The island is inaccessible for nearly eight months of the 
year on account of ice-floes ; but during the summer it is 
visited by crowds of pilgrims. 

This monastery in its turn, long regarded as the 
northernmost outpost of the Eussian Church, became a 
centre of missionary activity in Arctic regions. On a rocky 
island on Lake Loubensky, not far from Bielo-ozero, there 
lived a community of monks who were engaged in preach- 
ing the gospel to the Finnish tribe of the Chondes. The 
monk Lazarus founded a monastery on the shore of Lake 
Onega as a missionary centre for the conversion of the 
Laplanders, while the monks of Salaam on the neighbour- 
ing Lake Ladoga also evangelised these people. In the 
south and east, and throughout the greater part of her 
country, Eussia was now down-trodden and distressed by 
a cruel, barbarous yoke. Yet we see these very years 
of her oppression to be the times of greatest activity 
in the extension of Christianity on her inhospitable borders 
out of reach of the Asiatic intruder. History has few 
more inspiring tales to tell than this record of the sweet 



384 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

fchat came out of the bitter, the honey from the lion's 
mouth. The Eussian Church was never more fruitful in 
winning converts to the gospel than when so many of her 
sons had fled from before the oppressor, not to rest in peace, 
but to take up new work, and utilise their exile in the 
service of their Lord. Thus the dreadful Mongol invasion, 
which on the surface appeared to be nothing but a curse 
to the Church as well as to the nation, proved to be the un- 
intentional stimulus of wide-spreading missionary activity, 
and indirectly the means of transmitting the greatest 
benefits to unknown tribes by the northern seas. 



CHAPTER III 



THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 

Books named in Chap. II. ; also for Ivan the Terrible, Early 
Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia (The Hakluyt Society), 
1856 ; Leroy Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Eng. trans., 
1893-96. 

At Eome the popes were always ready to regard the 
distress of the East as their own opportunity ; and more 
than once the threatened approach of the Turks to Con- 
stantinople had opened up the way for negotiations between 
the Lateran and the Byzantine court. A similar condition 
is to be observed in Eussia under the Mongol oppression. 
The orthodox Church appeared to be now in the most 
helpless and hopeless condition. The Latin conquest of 
Constantinople had forced the Greek patriarch into exile, 
and his immediate task was to gather together the scattered 
remnants of his authority, while a usurper, a bishop of the 
papal Church, was sitting on his throne at St. Sophia. 
Thus harassed and hampered, he could not be expected to 
do anything to help his proteges in the north. Under 
these circumstances the Pope Innocent iv. proposed to assist 
Eussia by raising a crusade against the Mongols on condition 
of union with Eome. With this end in view he sent his 
legates to the two princes, Alexander at Novgorod, and 
Daniel, the Prince of Calick in the south. The former, 
being fairly out of the reach of the invaders, could afford to 
reject the papal overtures ; but Daniel, whose territory was 
suffering from the full force of the Asiatic scourge, accepted 
the crown the pope had sent him and with it the title of 
King of Galick, though shrewdly postponing the execution 

25 



386 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



of his part of the proposed bargain till an oecumenical 
council had decided on the question of the union of the 
two Churches. 

The post of metropolitan of Kiev had been vacant for 
ten years during the troubles of the times. This old 
political capital and ecclesiastical centre of Eussia had been 
sacked, and its principal buildings, which had been used as 
fortresses during the siege — the cathedral of St. Sophia, 
the church of the Tithes, the monastery of St. Michael, 
and the great Pechersky Monastery — all captured one 
after the other and destroyed. Daniel now took steps to 
fill the vacancy. At the very time when he was carrying 
on his negotiations with the pope he was also in communica- 
tion with the patriarch Manuel il. He selected a patriotic 
Eussian named Cyril to be metropoHtan of Kiev, and sent 
him to Nicsea for consecration (a. D. 1250). Cyril proved to 
be a great bishop ; it is to his energy that we must attribute 
in a large measure the rapid revival of the Church in Eussia 
after the stunning blow it had received from the Mongol 
invasion. Cyril left the ruins of Kiev, passed through the 
desolate towns of Cheringoff and Eiazan, and travelled 
on to Novgorod, which had escaped the scourge. There 
he consecrated an archbishop and met the Prince Alex- 
ander on his return from a journey to the horde to pay 
his homage to the khan. The camp of the nomadic 
Mongols had been moved from place to place during times 
of war; but now it was settled at Sarai. Since many 
Eussians were actually resident there, or were at least com- 
pelled to go there from time to time to visit their foreign 
master, Cyril made it a bishopric, and consecrated Metro- 
phanes, its first bishop. This see remained in being as long 
as the Mongol power existed ; it was brought to an end 
when the horde was broken up. 

In the year 1274, Cyril summoned a synod at Vladimir 
on the occasion of the consecration of Serapias, the archi- 
mandrite of the Pechersky Monastery, to the bishopric. 
The synod set about a reformation of Church discipHne 
with a view to rooting out simony and other abuses, and 



THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 



387 



exacting enquiry into the character of candidates for orders. 
The extreme importance attached to minutise of ritual 
in the Eastern Church is well illustrated by the special 
emphasis which was afterwards given to this synod s 
prohibition of the custom of mixing the holy chrism with 
oil, and of the use of affusion instead of immersion in the 
rite of baptism. 

When Cyril died (a.d. 1 28 1), for a short time no successor 
was appointed, because, although the Latin usurpation was 
at an end, and Michael Palseologus was now reigning at 
Constantinople, both the emperor and his patriarch were 
suspected of inclinations towards Eome. But when, after 
the death of Michael (a.d. 1282), his son Andronicus 
restored the orthodox Joseph, that patriarch sent into 
Eussia Maximus, a Greek, to be metropolitan. It is to 
be observed that whenever the Eussian prince chooses a 
metropolitan he selects a man of his own nationality, and 
that whenever the patriarch nominates anybody for the 
office he takes care to send a Greek. "We may see in 
these facts a portent of the future, when Eussia could 
dare to be more independent. In the last year of this 
gloomy thirteenth century the metropolitan Maximus 
moved his centre from the ruined Kiev and its desolated 
neighbourhood to the new capital, Vladimir. It was not 
long there; for on his death (A.D. 1305) it was removed 
to Moscow, a city destined to be the great metropolis 
of the Eussian Church and empire for many years to 
come. 

To add to the troubles of these dark times, the princes, 
who were allowed a measure of home rule under the 
suzerainty of the khan, quarrelled among themselves. The 
Church was then the one bond of unity for the unhappy 
Eussian people, and the metropolitan bishop its one visible 
centre. Thus this ecclesiastic acquired temporarily in Eussia 
some shadow of the influence that was exercised by the pope 
in Italy during the quarrels of the barons. It was the 
perception of this fact that led Prince John at Moscow to 
invite the metropolitan to come from Vladimir and reside 



388 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



at his capital. Meanwhile another movement was going 
on in the West. In the year 1392, Lithuania was brought 
into connection with Poland ; eighteen years later, its prince, 
Vitovt, defeated the Teutonic knights,^ and so stayed 
the encroachments of Germany and the papal influence. 
In order to strengthen his independence both politically 
and ecclesiastically, Vitovt requested the patriarchs of 
Constantinople to appoint a metropolitan for Kiev. This 
would have involved the independence of Moscow and its 
metropolitan. But the patriarch would not comply. 
Then Vitovt convoked a synod of his orthodox bishops, 
which elected a Bulgarian, Gregory Tsamblak, to the new 
office. 

Gregory was orthodox according to the Greek standard. 
But Vitovt sent him to the council of Constance, which 
was then in session. A little later the metropolitan 
Photius seized a favourable moment for visiting both 
Vitovt and Yagello the King of Poland. The death of 
Photius was followed by a time of miserable dissentions at 
Moscow. Vitovt died, and his successor, Svidrigailo, sent 
Gerasimus, the bishop of Smolensk, to Constantinople to be 
appointed metropolitan of Kiev. For some reason not easy 
to divine, the patriarch Joseph consented. He may have 
thought that the disorderly condition of Moscow unfitted 
that new metropolis to be the seat of a primate. But he 
may also have had some foresight of the inevitable con- 
sequence of the removal of the metropolitan so far beyond 
the reach of Constantinople. There does not seem to have 
been any formal act on the part of the patriarch to put 
the central and eastern parts of Eussia under the new 
metropolitan. Neverthelegs, the appointment of Gerasimus 
as metropolitan of Kiev while the see of Moscow was vacant 
could not but imply a transference of the ecclesiastical centre 
of gravity. Joseph could not recognise any independent 
Church of Lithuania. To the patriarch of Constantinople 
both Eussia proper and the Western provinces on its 
border were but parts of the one holy orthodox Church. 
^ An order established to convert the heathen Lithuanians by force. 



THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 



389 



There is not much advantage in discussing this curious 
situation, because even though appointed metropoUtan by 
the patriarch, Grerasimus was unable to exercise any in- 
fluence in Eussia, or to be recognised by any of the Eussian 
bishops. Though it was his wish to go to Moscow and 
establish himself there, he had to remain at Smolensk. 
Had he succeeded, the patriarch would have gained nothing 
by his appointment. The magnitude of the Eussian 
Church would have left Lithuania hanging on its fringe as 
a mere outlying district, and Constantinople would have 
had no better security for the retention of its influence and 
authority. If we are to understand that from the first 
Joseph ha.d intended Gerasimus to reside at Moscow, it is 
difficult to discover what good he could have hoped to reap 
from his unpopular act in thrusting an outsider on the 
Eussian Church. Eussia had not always submitted to Greek 
metropolitans with good grace. But to be governed by a 
Lithuanian when Lithuania was independent and looking to 
Poland for sympathy, certainly this was not a thing for 
her to meekly accept even from the hands of the patriarch. 

Nor did Lithuania itself ultimately profit. Gerasimus 
came to an awful end. His friend and patron Svidrigailo was 
informed that he was carrying on a treasonable correspond- 
ence with Sigismund, a rival claimant to the principality. 
In a rage at the ingratitude of a man whom he had so 
much favoured, the prince burnt him alive. After this 
tragedy the ecclesiastical independence of Lithuania 
came to an end. Her metropolitan was never able to 
take the lead of the Eussian Church. But she was not 
strong enough to stand alone. The inevitable drift was 
in the opposite direction. The independence of Lithuania 
was maintained for almost a century and a half, and then 
ended by the diet of Lublin (a.d. 1568). Gradually the 
leading families joined themselves to Poland and accepted 
the Eoman Catholic religion, and the people followed. 

We now come to the important events associated with 
the career of Isidore. At this point Eussia emerges from her 
comparative isolation, and in the person of her ecclesiastical 



390 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

representative takes a leading place in the history of the 
universal Cliurch. When the Emperor John was preparing 
for the council, v^hich, as he hoped, was to bring about the 
union of Christendom and so help him in his resistance to 
the encroachments of the Turks, Isidore was sent from 
Constantinople to be metropolitan at Moscow. He was 
deliberately chosen as a man favourable to the union of the 
Eastern and Western Churches, and it has been maintained 
that the Pope Eugenius had actually intrigued for his 
appointment. Nevertheless, he met with a warm welcome 
in Eussia. Both Kiev and Moscow gave him a public 
reception, But he had not been in office more than four 
months when he urged the prince, Basil, to permit him to 
attend the council that was to meet in Italy, and obtained 
a reluctant consent, on the ground that otherwise Eussia 
would be the only Christian country excluded. It was a 
difficult position. At Constantinople the emperor was 
straining every nerve to be reconciled with Eome in order 
to obtain the aid of the Western powers. But Constanti- 
nople's danger was not felt at Moscow, and there nobody 
had the slightest wish for union, except the one Greek at 
the head of the Church who had been sent there for the 
express purpose of helping it on. 

The princes and prelates assembled at Ferara waited for 
Isidore, as representing the largest branch of the Eastern 
Church, before opening the council. As soon as he arrived 
the sessions began. It will be remembered ^ that while Mark 
of Ephesus led the opposition, Bessarion, the metropolitan 
of Nicsea, and Isidore of Moscow were foremost in support- 
ing the proposals for union. After the council had been 
transferred to Florence, and when at length Eugenius had 
triumphed and the union was declared, Bessarion and Isidore 
were both rewarded by being made cardinals, and the latter 
received the title, " Cardinal Legate of the Apostolic See in 
Eussia." He returned home triumphant. He had accom- 
plished his object — at Florence. But what was the good 
of that if his action should not be ratified in Eussia i 

1 Sfte p. 268. 



THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 



391 



Isidore seems fco have deceived himself with the notion 
that he could simply assume that in what he had done he 
had carried his Church with him. So enamoured was he 
of the papal idea, that he seems to have behaved like a 
pope himself. He appears to have been deluded by the 
enthusiastic reception that had been accorded him when he 
first came to Moscow. But then the people were delighted 
at having a metropolitan of their own after a long interval, 
during which the Lithuanian metropolitan had been trying 
to get the upper hand in Eussia. Now the case was very 
different. Without consulting his bishops the metropolitan 
had surrendered the chief points of dispute between the 
Eastern and Western Churches. It looked Hke a betrayal 
of trust. We are prepared for the sequel. 

Isidore is conducting the service at the church of the 
Assumption on the first occasion after his return. The 
archdeacon standing by his chair has read the acts of the 
council of Florence to an astonished congregation. Isidore 
names the pope in his prayers. Then the Prince Basil 
cannot contain his indignation. He calls Isidore a traitor 
to orthodoxy and a false pastor. 

The first step is to summon a council of bishops and 
boyars. They come together as men of one mind. Not a 
bishop, not a lord will own the pope as vicar of Christ. 
Every member of the council without exception rejects the 
Western doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit. This 
means the condemnation of their metropolitan. In spite 
of his skilful pleading he can make out no case to win a 
single vote for his side. The issue is the banishment of 
Isidore to the Choudoff Monastery. 

The subsequent story of Isidore is full of adventure. 
He escaped from his prison and fled to Eome. Thence he 
was sent to Constantinople to attempt there what he had 
been unable to effect in his own see. The Greeks were 
as reluctant as the Eussians to submit to the Florentine 
decision. Isidore was one of the ablest men of the day ; 
but ability counted for little when confronted with age- 
long orthodoxy. His efforts were brought to an abrupt 



392 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



termination by the last act in the tragedy of the Eastern 
Empire. While the Christians were quarrelling the Turks 
were advancing. At the capture of Constantinople by 
Mohammed ii., Isidore was one of the many Greeks who 
fled to Italy. No one had earned a better right to an 
asylum at Kome, and there he was rewarded with the 
phantom title of " Patriarch of Constantinople." 

A shadowy attempt to maintain the papal authority 
which Isidore had vainly tried to introduce into Eussia 
was made in the appointment of one of his followers named 
Gregory as metropolitan of Kiev. But although he was 
recognised by Casimir, the Prince of Lithuania, Gregory was 
never acknowledged by the Church in Eussia or even in 
Lithuania. The schism was maintained for some time by 
the appointment of a succession of Latin metropohtans at 
Kiev ; but these men had no following. They can only 
be regarded as papal agents resident in a country over 
which they exercised no authority and in which they 
were not in any way recognised by the people or the 
Church. 

The fall of Constantinople, which makes the year 
1453 a landmark in the history of Europe, while it was 
followed by disastrous effects on the Greek Church in the 
dominion of the Turks, only had an indirect influence on 
the Church in Eussia. Ecclesiastically the immediate 
consequence was the gainuig of independence. The 
Eussians were no longer made to look to the imperial 
patriarch for the appointment of their chief pastor. The 
metropolitan was now elected by a council of Eussian 
bishops. Still, there was no breach of Church unity ; the 
Eussian Church remained in communion with the oppressed 
Greek Church, as a branch of the one holy orthodox 
Church, and was still nominally subject to the patriarch of 
Constantinople. Jonah, who had been appointed after a 
vacancy of eight years to succeed the deposed Isidore, 
was the last primate who bore the title " Metropolitan 
of Kiev." His successors were named " Metropolitan of 
Moscow and of all Eussia." Thus the 'change which had 



THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 



393 



long been an accomplished fact was now openly recognised 
in that most conservative of all spheres — the ecclesiastical 
vocabulary. 

Another influence, more positive in character, now 
came in to advance the importance of the Greek Church. 
This was the rise of Eussia as a great united nation. 
Hitherto, although a certain common life had pulsated 
through the populations scattered over the vast area which 
we now know as European Eussia, this was not unified 
under one government. We have seen how Lithuania 
established independence in conjunction with Poland. 
Novgorod was also virtually unattached to the southern 
Sclavs and administered as a separate republic. Other dis- 
tricts had their autonomy under different princes. Even 
the chief rulers at Kiev, and afterwards at Vladimir, were 
regarded as princes, or grand dukes, not as kings or 
emperors. But soon after the destruction of the Byzan- 
tine Empire there appeared in the north a new empire, 
the Eussian Empire. Thus the rise of Eussia as a great 
united nation nearly synchronises with the fall of the 
power that had stood for Eome in the East. This most 
important historical fact was mainly brought about by the 
ability and energy of Ivan in., who reigned for forty- 
three years — from A.D. 1462 to A.D. 1505. The power 
of the horde had now broken up and crumbled away, 
leaving only scattered fragments, such as the Mongol 
settlement in the Crimea. A strong ruler had a clear 
course for the consolidation of his nation. Ivan took a 
politic step in marrying Zoe, a niece of the heroic Con- 
stantine Palseologus, with the approval of Pope Sixtus ix., 
who saw in the match a hope of the fulfilment of the 
dream of the papacy and chief end of all its diplomacy — 
the union of Christendom under the pope. . Here, however, 
he was mistaken. Zoe proved to be a devoted member of 
the Eastern Church. On the strength of this connection 
with the Byzantine imperial family Ivan assumed the 
cognisance of the double-headed eagle, ever afterwards the 
badge of. Eussia, and also in a tentative way the title of 



394 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Tsar.^ It was a broad hint that the empire of the East 
which had perished at Constantinople was to have its 
resurrection at Moscow. Ivan laid the foundations of 
empire broad and deep. He was anxious to encourage 
letters and civilisation, and he welcomed many learned 
Greeks who came to Moscow with the Princess Zoe, 
bringing precious manuscripts with them. In some degree 
Eussia shared in the scattering of pearls of learning which 
followed the flight of the scholars from Constantinople, and 
brought the works of classic literature, together with the 
scholars who could interpret them, to Western Europe. 
Moscow never enjoyed the Eenaissance, as that wonderful 
awakening was enjoyed by Florence and Basle. On 
the other hand, it must be remembered that, unlike the 
benighted West, before the Mongol invasion Eussia had 
been in close touch with the life of Constantinople. 
Italian architects also visited the progressive city of 
Moscow. The most important of these was Aristotle 
Fioraventi, who designed many of the most important 
public buildings. 

We look to see what part the Church had in the life 
and movement of the new age. There was no reformation 
in Eussia. That is the first broad fact to be noticed, 
differentiating the new empire of the tsars from the West. 
Eussia had not suffered from the abuses of the papacy ; 
she had not experienced the tyranny of the popes which 
drove German princes to revolt quite apart from the 
interests of religion ; she had no doctrine of purgatory 
and no sale of indulgences — Luther's first provocation. 
Not entering into the great intellectual awakening which 
so opened men's eyes in regard to religion as well as 
secular knowledge that in England it was popularly known 
as " the new learning," she missed its inspiration of new 

^ This title— corresponding to the Latin " Caesar" — did not necessarily 
involve a claim to the supreme position, since that had been designated by 
the higher name "Augustus." Roman emperors had given dependent 
princes the honorary designation of Caesar, under their own imperial 
suzerainship. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether among the Russians 
in this late age the distinction was recognised. 



THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 



395 



ideas. Having had the Bible from the first in the ver- 
nacular she had no such experience as that which resulted 
from its translation into English and German, and the 
consequent popularising of Scripture as a long lost treasure 
gladly recovered. Lastly, she had no Luther, no Zwingli, 
no John Knox. On the other hand, in justice to the 
Sclavonic race represented by Eussia, it should be remem- 
bered that John Huss was a Sclav ; and in some respects 
John Huss was the parent as he certainly was the pre- 
cursor of the Eeformation on the Continent. Originating 
in an Englishman, Wycliffe, the first of the reformers 
before the Eeformation, it passed through Huss the Bohe- 
mian into Germany, and so came back from the Sclav to 
the Teuton again. 

Now, though Eussia did not need reformation to the 
extent that was requisite in Europe, because she was not 
suffering from the specific corruptions of the Eoman Church 
at the end of the Middle Ages, she had her own super- 
stitions derived from a still earlier period, in the magical 
value attached to icons and relics by the mass of the 
people, as well as what some would consider to be the 
errors of both branches of the Church in their departure 
from the primitive type. At all events, in so far as the 
Eeformation, over and above its Iconoclasm, was a religious 
awakening, to Protestants it must be a matter of regret 
that Eussia had no share in it. The common habit of 
treating the Western Church as though it were the whole 
Church has resulted in regarding the Eeformation as a 
movement stirring Christendom to its depths, instead of 
which it was simply a Western movement. Great churches 
occupying vast areas of Europe, Asia, and Africa, were quite 
outside its range, being neither scourged by the evils against 
which it protested nor favoured with the factors of its new 
Hfe. 

The consoUdation of the Eussian Empire under Ivan ill. 
and his successors was accompanied by quite another 
stimulus to devotion. In the West the year 1000 had 
been anticipated with terror as the destined date of the 



396 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



end of the world ; a similar alarm was felt in Eussia 
towards the close of the fifteenth century, on the ground 
that the seven-thousandth year after the Creation was 
approaching. Then the boyars showed their zeal by build- 
ing a number of private churches. A curious result 
followed. Priests were sent to private churches apart from 
the parochial clergy. Being responsible only to their 
patrons who had appointed and who alone supported them, 
they were indifferent to the bishops and independent 
of the State, since they did not live upon the tithes. 
Accordingly, these chaplain priests were charged with 
insubordination and suspected of laxity of morals due to 
the absence of ecclesiastical discipline. We must not 
admit this scandal too readily, knowing the source from 
which it comes. 

Instead of the dreaded end of the world, what Eussia 
now came to experience was a final and victorious conflict 
with the Mongols. The Church took a leading part in 
tnis patriotic effort. An old man, Bassian, archbishop of 
Eostoff, encouraged Ivan with the utmost enthusiasm, 
declaring that if the sovereign would not go he would 
lead the assault ; he was seconded by Gerontius the metro- 
politan, and Ivan set out to attack the Mongols. Their 
chief Achmed fled without striking a blow, and Eussia was 
free again. 

A strange light is thrown on the mind of the Church 
at this time by the story of Gerontius's successor, the metro- 
politan Zosimus. This man had been appointed by Ivan 
without the consent of a synod (a.d. 1491). He was 
accused of adopting " a blasphemous Jewish heresy which 
rejected our Saviour Jesus Christ and all His doctrine." 
A Jew named Zachariah was said to have brought the 
heresy from Lithuania to Novgorod twenty years before, 
and to have seduced two priests in that city, Alexis and 
Dionysius, by magic and cabalistic art. When Zosimus 
was at Novgorod he met the two priests, and was so drawn 
to them that he brought them with him back to Moscow, 
and appointed one to be the chief priest at the famous new 



THE REVIVAL OP RUSSIA 



397 



Church of the Assumption and the other to be chief priest 
of the Church of the Archangel. In this way the suspected 
teaching was introduced to the very heart of the empire on 
the highest ecclesiastical authority. The heresy which the 
Jew had whispered in the closet was now preached on the 
housetop. But Gennadius, the Prince of Novgorod, would 
not let the matter rest. He viewed the new teaching with 
horror, and induced Ivan and Zosimus to summon a synod 
on the question. Joseph of Volokolamsk appeared as the 
eloquent champion of orthodoxy, and the heresy was con- 
demned. Alexis had already passed to the silence " beyond 
these voices." But Dionysius was alive to receive his 
anathema, and he was punished with imprisonment in a 
convent. Zosimus himself was spared for the time being. 
But twelve years later he was required to resign by Ivan 
and sent off to a monastery on the ostensible ground of 
drunkenness (a.d. 1496). So grave was the idea of the 
head of the Church being guilty of heresy that this shock- 
ing scandal was hushed up under cover of what was 
regarded as the milder evil of intemperance. 

After this the new metropolitan Simon presided over 
a synod which was called to bring about a reformation of 
morals. It ordered that convents for women should be 
kept apart from the religious houses for men, and that no 
men should perform Divine service in them — a drastic 
measure that throws a lurid light on the suspected con- 
sequences of the visits of priests to these convents in 
discharge of the duties of their holy office. The same 
synod enacted the canon, which has obtained down to 
our own day, that a priest must give up his cure on 
the death of his wife and retire into a monastery — so 
dangerous did the Eussian Church consider a celibate 
priesthood to be. Priests of unworthy chaiacters were to 
be deprived of their posts and degraded from their orders. 
The enactments of this synod imply a recognition of serious 
moral decay in the Church. 

Meanwhile practices little better than the doings of 
savages were witnessed in the court. One physician — who 



398 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

had staked his head in undertaking the case — was publicly 
executed for not saving the life of Ivan's eldest son whom 
he was called in to cure ; another — a German — for failing 
in his treatment of a Tartar prince at court, was put to the 
torture by the chief's son, who would have let him off alive 
for a ransom. The grand duke, to use the chronicler's 
title, would not allow this ; so " they took him to the 
river Moska, under the bridge in winter, and cut him to 
pieces with a knife, like a sheep." The decay of morals is 
further reflected in the Sudebuik, a code of laws which 
Ivan issued in the year 1497 and which marks the second 
stage in Eussian jurisprudence, the first being seen in the 
Busshaya Pravada} Clearly the rise of the tsardom and 
the consolidation of Eussia into a great empire, while 
indicative of a kind of progress, and while really associated 
with a certain spread of culture, must not be confounded 
with an advance of the people in those higher things 
that make for a nation's real greatness ; nor may the 
corresponding development of the Church be taken as a 
proof that the spirit of Christianity was becoming a power 
in the land. 

Ivan III. was followed by his son Basil (a.d. 1505), 
and he in turn by his son Ivan IV., known as " Ivan the 
Terrible.'* 2 This strong, capable ruler was the first to 
definitely and persistently denominate himself tsar, and 
so make a bold, open claim to be the heir of the Eoman 
Caesars, or at least their equal. His grandfather had only 
used the title casually and tentatively. Ivan iv. had no 
hesitation about the adoption of it. 

Ivan was but a child ten years old when his father 
died (a.d. 1533), and the government was administered 
first by his mother and then by the boyars, till he was 
able to take it up himself. For a time he ruled well 
under the guidance of an old priest of Novgorod, named 

1 P. 367. 

^ In Russian this surname means one to be reverenced or respected ; and 
it was originally applied to Ivan as a title of honour. History, however, 
lias justly connected it with its more ugly signification. 



THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 



399 



Silvester. At the age of seventeen he issued a revised 
edition of his grandfather's SudehuiJc, and the next year 
the Stoglat or " Book of the Hundred Chapters " appeared. 
Its object was to reform the discipline of the Church, and 
among other improvements it ordered was the establishment 
of schools throughout the country, where reading, writing, 
and choral singing were to be taught. 

The second half of Ivan's reign was totally different in 
character. He had greatly increased the importance of 
Kussia by his military achievements ; but later on he grew 
suspicious of the disaffection of the boyars, and his conduct 
bordered on insanity. Ivan now went about the country 
with a body of six hundred young men, whom he called 
his " Peculiars," burning and ravaging his towns and villages. 
He claimed the lives of his slaves, the Eussians, as his 
property. In a fit of passion he kiUed his own son. Yet 
Ivan was religious in his way. He prided himself on his 
orthodoxy, and was credited with being able to repeat 
whole chapters of the Bible. He would ring the bell for 
matins himself and call up his court at all hours of the 
night to attend the prayers. When at Alexandrooskoe he 
spent most of his time in church. He practised severe 
asceticism and attempted to force it on his servants. 

One metropolitan after another fell under the dis- 
pleasure of the pious tyrant. When the tsar's insane 
degeneration set in, Athanasius, the metropolitan in office 
at the time, being of a mild, timid nature, retired from his 
responsible post, unable to meet its new requirements. 
Ivan then appointed Germanus, the archbishop of Kazan, 
a good old man, who begged to be excused from under- 
taking the difficult task that was laid upon him. But the 
tsar would have no refusal. Germanus, forced to accept 
the post, now resolved to do his duty in it. He at once 
sought an interview with Ivan, and in a faithful, earnest, 
fatherly way, urged him to turn from his ruinous course. 
Such impertinence was intolerable. The tsar flung himself 
into a rage, and forthwith sent the old bishop back to his 
former diocese. 



400 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

Ivan's next choice fell on a friend of his childhood, 
the monk Pliilip, who had retired to the wild solitude of 
the Solovetsky, where his influence was stimulatiug^ the 
monastery's missionary work round the borders of the 
White Sea. In his queer way the tsar felt the fascination 
of the venerable man's holiness, and chose him as his 
spiritual adviser. Philip wept at the compulsion that 
dragged him from his retirement. But he went forth with 
the spirit of a hero and a martyr. Earely did any man 
undertake a more perilous duty. He would gladly have 
escaped the task ; but now that it was laid upon him, like 
his predecessor Gerontius, he determined to discharge it 
faithfully to the full. Philip called on the bishops to help 
him in opposing the tsar's tyrannical conduct. Some were 
openly conniving at it ; others, though disapproving dared 
not offer a word of protest. They united in warning the 
metropolitan of the danger to Church and State from 
irritating the tyrant. But Philip would not hear of any 
compromise with iniquity. On the day of his consecration 
he uttered fearless words of admonition in his reply to the 
tsar's address of recognition, and Ivan submitted to them, 
being at present under the spell of his veneration for the 
speaker. 

It was not long before a fresh outbreak of cruelty on 
the part of Ivan sent the boyars to Philip for protection. 
Then he behaved like a second Ambrose, but under very 
different circumstances. The mad Ivan was a far more 
dangerous person to confront than Theodosius, passionate 
Spaniard though he was. Yet Philip would not recognise 
Ivan when he came to the church with his " Peculiars," 
and when the metropolitan's attention was called to the 
tsar's presence he refused to own him. When Ivan would 
have silenced the bold pastor with threats, Philip exclaimed, 
" I am a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth, as all my 
fathers were, and I am ready to suffer for the truth. 
Where would be my faith if I kept silence ? " ^ 

Although the tsar left the church in a towering rage 

^ MouraviefF, p. 115. 



THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 



401 



even yet he did not dare to lay violent hands on the 
revered metropolitan. But a little later some charge was 
trumped up against Philip, and a slavish law court then 
pronounced his deposition. While he was conducting the 
liturgy in his church a crowd of " Peculiars " rushed in and 
stripped him to his shirt — a brutal act ordered by the 
spiteful tsar in revenge for the public rebuke he had 
received in church from the metropolitan. Dragged before 
Ivan, Philip besought the tsar to mend his ways, but in 
vain. Philip's punishment for this new act of daring was 
to receive the bleeding head of his nephew sent by the 
tsar as a present to him in prison. He was then banished 
to the Otroch Monastery in Tver, where after a short time 
he was strangled by Ivan's order. The story of Philip is 
worth telling in detail for the sake of the revelation of 
a noble character which it contains ; but also because it 
relates to the one recognised " martyr " among her prelates 
in the Church of Eussia — a Church singularly free from 
persecution during the whole course of her history. 

Ivan reigned for fifty-one years, and died in the year 
1584. His career has been a puzzle for the historians. 
Not only did it vary greatly in character during successive 
periods, but throughout it revealed a nature of startling 
contrasts and inconsistencies. The cruel tsar was 
intensely religious in his own way, but he was actively 
interested in literature and culture. He set up the first 
printing press in Moscow, where the Acts of the Apostles 
and the Epistles were printed under the superintendence 
of the metropolitan Macarius during the happy early part 
of this reign. A little later the tsar had a copy of the 
Gospels printed, and after that the entire Bible was printed 
in Sclavonic at Kiev, under the directions of Constantine the 
deputy-governor. 

Some of Ivan's actions were rather the achievements of 
a strong, capable ruler than the doings of a mere despot, 
even when he was most tyrannical. In the course of the 
consolidation of Russia he destroyed the ancient liberties of 
Novgorod, which hitherto had governed itself as a practically 
26 



402 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

independent republic. This may be compared to the later 
policy of Kussia in invading the freedom of Finland. It 
was cruel to the subjects ; yet it was regarded as a political 
necessity by the government. Like the State, the Church 
at Novgorod was in a way self-contained. In the earlier 
times, throughout the rest of Eussia the clergy were more 
or less Greek, or at least under the influence of the Greek 
patriarch. But at Novgorod they were entirely Eussian, 
and the archbishop was elected by the citizens without 
waiting for any investiture from the metropolitan of Kiev. 
He took the first place of dignity in the republic; in 
acts of State his name was cited before aU other names. 
Novgorod wanted to have a metropolitan ; but that was 
not allowed, and now Ivan's vigorous action put an end 
to both its political and its ecclesiastical independence. 

The remarkable contrasts which the life of Ivan 
contains have given rise to conflicting views about his 
character. The Polish poet Mi^kiewicz describes him as 
" the most finished tyrant known in history." The historian 
Karamsin — in his eloquent denunciation of this tyrant 
which he read to Alexander I., with the liberal tsar's 
approval — writes, " His conversion would have scandalised 
the world and shaken belief in providence. He had 
advanced too far into hell to be able to turn back." 
Karamsin regards him as a prince born vicious and cruel, 
miraculously brought into ways of virtue for a time, and 
abandoning himself to fury in his later years; and 
Kostomarof follows on similar lines. On the other hand, 
Soloviev distrusts the partisan tales on which his evil 
reputation rests. He was opposed by the nobles whose 
independence he was limiting, and they would be only 
too ready to encourage discreditable stories about their 
ruler. But M. Eamabaut calls attention to one terribly 
significant piece of evidence — a document preserved at 
the monastery of Cyril, in which Ivan asks for the prayers 
of the Church for his victims by name — how characteristic 
is this of his mixture of religion and cruelty ! This 
document contains 986 proper names, and references 



THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA 



403 



to as many as 3,470 persons. In some cases a name is 
followed by one of the clauses, " with his wife," " with his 
wife and children," " with his son," " with his daughter." 
Probably the true solution of the problem is that there was 
a strain of madness in the tsar which first showed itself 
in melancholia during a time of seclusion, and then at the 
end of his reign in some approach to homicidal mania. A 
cruel, self-willed, passionate tyrant, of great ability, energy, 
and prowess, successful to a remarkable degree in war, 
strong and wise in much of his civil government, rigorous 
in the observances of religion and enforcing the same 
rigour on those about him, Ivan is one of the most weird 
characters in all history • — a mad genius, doing his worst to 
ruin the empire he had built up with magnificent ability ; 
a diabolical devotee wading through seas of blood to his 
untimely prayers. 



CHAPTEE IV 



THE PATRIARCHATE 

Books named in Chap. I. ; also Peter Mogila, Exposition of the 
Orthodox Faith, Eng. trans., c. 1750 ; The Patriarch and the 
Tsar : the Replies of Nikon (trans, by W. Palmer), 1871 ; 
Palmer, Dissertations on the Orthodox or Eastern Gommuniony 
1853. 

The reign of Ivan's son, the amiable, feeble Feodor, is 
noteworthy in Church history as the time when the brief 
patriarchate of Moscow was established. Hitherto there 
had been five patriarchs — the patriarchs of Eome, Con- 
stantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. But Rome 
was now apostate. Like Matthias who was chosen to fill 
Judas's vacant place, the patriarch of Moscow was to make 
up the normal number again. The piety of Feodor is 
credited with the idea of this daring ecclesiastical innovation; 
but circumstances had prepared the way for it. The fall 
of Constantinople and the loss of liberty suffered by its 
patriarchs under the Turks ; the spread of Christianity 
over Eussia and the shifting of the centre of gravity of 
Oriental Christianity from the Greek to the Sclavonic 
peoples ; the removal of the metropolitan from Kiev to 
Vladimir, and then his settlement at Moscow, in the very 
heart of Russia, so far away from Constantinople ; the 
centralising of government in the hands of the tsar and 
the consequent consolidation of the vast area over which 
his sway extended ; the printing of the Bible and other 
books in the language of the people ; and the Russianising 
of the Church and exclusion of Greek elements — all these 
factors combined to render the now merely nominal subjec- 

404 



THE PATRIARCHATE 



405 



tion of the Church in Eussia to the patriarch of Constanti- 
nople an anachronism and an inconvenience. 

It was under these circumstances that Joachim the 
patriarch of Antioch paid a visit to the metropolitan 
Dionysius at Moscow in the year 1580, in order to seek 
aid for his poverty-stricken people. Dionysius stood on 
his dignity in giving the benediction to his visitor in the 
first instance, instead of humbly submitting to the blessing 
of an ecclesiastical superior and returning it. The tsar 
then proposed to his boyars the suitability of establish- 
ing a patriarchate at Moscow, and sent one of them to 
discuss the question with Joachim, who replied that it was 
a matter that could only be settled by an oecumenical 
council, but promised to consult the other patriarchs 
about it. 

Two years later, Jermiah ii., the patriarch of Constan- 
tinople, followed the example of his brother at Antioch, 
and came to Moscow on a similar errand. It is painful 
to see how in both cases the need of pecuniary aid 
introduces a sordid element into the consideration of the 
tsar's proposal. The Greeks hoped to gain something by 
the friendship of Eussia, and the Eussians were not slow to 
take advantage of their poverty and weakness. Jeremiah 
had been imprisoned at Ehodes by the sultan, and, though 
now at liberty, he found himself in desperate straits when 
he threw himself on the compassion of his fellow-Christians 
in Eussia. He can hardly be regarded as a free agent. 
ISTevertheless at first he resisted the tsar's proposal. He 
was an old man and learned, and the chief custodian of 
the now ossified customs of the Greek Church. So great 
an innovation must have startled him when he heard 
of it from his brother prelate, the patriarch of Antioch. 
But he had had time to think it over since then ; and in- 
asmuch as he came to Moscow of his own accord, well 
knowing what was desired there, he must have been 
prepared to face the question. He really had no alternative 
but to yield, and he may have taken a common-sense view 
of the whole case. After all, the new step was inevitable. 



406 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



So Jeremiah gave his reluctant consent, and the new 
patriarchate was established without the oecumenical council 
which Joachim had said was necessary for the origination 
of it. 

A synod of all the Eussian bishops was now summoned 
at Moscow (a.d. 1587); and this synod submitted three 
names to the tsar, who at once chose the first of them, 
the metropolitan Job. The newly appointed patriarch 
was addressed as " oecumenical lord," and treated with 
the ceremonial honours so important in the eyes of an 
oriental court, which were scrupulously equated with those 
assigned by ancient custom to his guest, the patriarch of 
Constantinople. But beyond this accession of dignity the 
patriarch of Moscow had acquired no more real power than 
had been secured already by the metropolitan. Now, how- 
ever, Novgorod was able to get its desire. The supremacy 
of Moscow being assured, there was no longer any objection 
to having a metropolitan at Novgorod. Accordingly, one 
of Job's first acts in the patriarchate was to raise the 
bishop of the northern city to the position of metropolitan ; 
at the same time he made the bishop of Eostoff also a 
metropoHtan. A year or two later the Bulgarian metro- 
politan Tirnoff, a descendant of the imperial families of the 
Cantacuzenes and Palseologi, came to Moscow, charged with 
synodical letters from the three patriarchs of Constan- 
tinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem, confirming the appointment 
of Job as patriarch of Moscow. Thus the new patriarchate 
was firmly established and duly recognised. 

We are now approaching the time known as " the 
period of troubles." During the disorganisation of the 
civil government that followed the death of Feodor (a.d. 
1598) the Church came to the front as the chief permanent 
institution of the Eussian nation, and the patriarch of 
Moscow stood out as the one visible centre of unity. In 
this way the temporary weakness of the tsardom led to 
the temporary elevation of the patriarchate. We shall see 
later how the appearance of a strong tsar was followed 
by the total and final abolition of the patriarchate. Mean- 



THE PAXRIARCHATE 



407 



while, however, the ofl&ce was rendering good service to 
the State as well as to the Church. 

A fresh attempt was now made to win over Eussia 
by the Church of Eome. This began in the lifetime of 
Feodor, who had ojffered himself as a candidate for the 
kingship of Poland and Lithuania. Sigismund of Sweden 
was chosen, and he proved himself a zealot for Eome, 
and roused so fierce an anti-Eussian feeling that his 
people were excited to a sort of crusade, which ultimately 
issued in the burning and sacking of Moscow. Terrible 
persecutions of the " orthodox " were perpetrated by the 
followers of the " union." At an early stage of the con- 
flict the Swedes devastated the lands of the Solovetsky 
Monastery and some smaller convents. A little later the 
Khan of the Crimea invaded Eussia and besieged Moscow. 
Then the patriarch Job sent his clergy round the walls 
chanting litanies and carrying the icon of " our Lady of 
the Don," after which he had it set up in a tent in 
the midst of the troops, like the ark in the tabernacle. 
Feodor, who was showing no energy in the defence of 
his city, calmly went to bed, assured that the spiritual 
protection secured by his patriarch would be sufficient. 
But the real protector of Moscow was Feeder's brother-in- 
law, Boris Godunoff, the masterful head of the government, 
who strongly fortified the city and succeeded in driving 
off the Mongols. 

A movement was now sedulously fomented in Little 
Eussia to induce the bishops of that district to consent to 
union with Eome. It is said that two bishops were got 
to sign a request to King Sigismund and the pope for the 
union as though in the name of a synod, on the pretence 
that it was a petition for new priveleges for the 
orthodox Church. Hearing of this, Jeremiah the patriarch 
of Constantinople — who does not appear to have acted as 
though he had handed over his authority in this region 
to his brother at Moscow — wrote to the two bishops that 
he should deprive them of their offices if they yielded to 
Eome, and other ecclesiastics protested. Then Ignatius, the 



408 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



leader of the movement, assembled a council at Brest 
Litovsky, which he opened with a speech in favour of 
union. Many discussions followed. In the end the metro- 
politan Michael was gained over, and then he and four 
bishops signed a sy nodical letter consenting to union on the 
terms of the council of Florence, but with the proviso that 
the discipline and ceremonies of the Eastern Church were to 
be preserved. Meanwhile the two bishops whose signatures 
to the earlier document had been obtained by false 
pretences discovered and exposed the fraud. At the same 
time a great outcry was raised against the five apostates at 
Brest. Accordingly a second synod was assembled at this 
border town. It consisted entirely of the orthodox party. 
The churches were all in the hands of the party of the 
union, and the synod had to meet in a private house. 
The metropolitan refused to answer two summonses to 
attend. Then the synod pronounced an anathema on him, 
and also on all the apostate bishops. On the other hand, the 
Uniats held their synod in a church, where they pronounced 
their anathema on the orthodox. The result was a schism. 

Eome admitted the Uniates on remarkably liberal 
terms. They were to retain their own ceremonies and 
even their own form of the creed. All that was required 
of them was submission to the pope. The Uniats had the 
upper hand both in Poland and in Lithuania, and they 
used their power to persecute both the orthodox party and 
also the protestants who were found in these parts. 

The ancient cathedral of St. Sophia of Kiev was taken 
from the orthodox and held for a time by the Uniats. 
But the apostate metropolitan did not dare to make it his 
centre, and he resided in safer quarters at Novgorod. 
An effort was made to seize the famous Pechersky 
Monastery ; but this failed. Subsequently much of the 
property of the orthodox monasteries was sequestrated, 
and Dominican convents were established in various 
parts of the country. This extraordinary condition of 
affairs, in which no orthodox bishops were appointed for 
Little Eussia, went on for over twenty years. 



THE PATRIARCHATE 



409 



The disorders that next afflicted Eussia were occasioned 
by one of the most amazingly successful impostures ever 
known to history. A pretender personated young Prince 
Dmitri, a son of Ivan the Terrible, who had died, probably 
murdered, some years before. This clever man was able to 
fight his way to Moscow and to reign there for some troublous 
years as Tsar of Eussia. In the civil war thus occasioned the 
Church was seriously affected, and monks and bishops were 
directly involved. One man in particular now comes to 
the front, both on account of his vigorous activity at the 
time, and because his name has become famous in the 
light of subsequent history. This is Philaret Eomanoff, 
the ancestor of the now reigning imperial family of Eussia. 
The house of Euric, the founder of the Eussian princedom 
at Kiev, became extinct at the death of Dmitcri. The 
new family of tsars was not yet in evidence. But during 
the time of confusion that intervened, its first known 
ancestor was already a person of importance in national 
and ecclesiastical affairs. Philaret was metropolitan of 
Eostoff. When the city was attacked by the pretender's 
party, most of the inhabitants fled ; but the bishop held his 
ground, shut himself up in his cathedral with those who 
refused to desert him, and there celebrated the liturgy as 
usual. The rebels broke in, to find him preaching to his 
people. They seized hold of Philaret, tore off his episcopal 
robes, and dragged him out of the place, half dead from their 
violent handling. At Moscow the Trinity laura became a 
citadel of defence and supported a siege of sixteen months, 
when attacked, it is said, by an army of 80,000 men with 
sixty cannons pouring shot on its walls and churches. On 
the side of the monastery eight hundred men fell ; but still 
the place held out. Twice it supplied Moscow itself with 
food. So wonderful an endurance was only accounted for 
by the protecting presence of two saints, Sergius and Nicon, 
who were believed to appear to the valiant defenders in 
visions or dreams. This monastery was now the heart of 
the defence of Eussia against an impudent, lying usurpa- 
tion. At the same time the patriarch Hermogenes was 



410 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



exerting all his influence to check the imposture. To add 
to the miseries of the time, the Poles ravaged the country, 
and seized and burnt its capital, deposed Hermogenes, and 
imprisoned him in a monastery, where he was starved to 
death (a.d. 1612). The Greek Ignatius, a follower of the 
pseudo-Dmitri, was now set up as patriarch of Eussia. 
Meanwhile the monks and their supporters in the Trinity 
Monastery still held out. At length its devoted patriotism 
and loyalty to its Church were rewarded. Gradually the 
infection of heroism spread. A fast of purification was 
observed all over Eussia. The new spirit now awakening 
in the people infused itself into an army of rescue. The 
Poles were defeated ; the Kremlin was captured ; and 
Philaret's young son Michael was elected tsar in the 
Trinity Monastery (a.d. 1613). 

The new tsar showed his gratitude to the Church and 
his appreciation of its support by uniting a council of 
bishops to the council of the boyars. In this way the 
Church was represented in the government of Eussia as it 
is in that of England by the presence of the bishops in the 
House of Lords. Much against his will, Philaret, now old 
and worn with the hardships he had endured, was elected 
patriarch ; and thus father and son stood at the head of 
Church and State as patriarch and tsar. The two together 
effected several important administrative reforms both in 
civil and in ecclesiastical affairs. Centralisation was aimed 
at throughout. Courts were established at Moscow for try- 
ing affairs concerning the provincial towns, and even the 
governors were made subject to these courts. Similarly the 
archimandrites of the monasteries and the priests and 
deacons and other clerical officers were put under the juris- 
diction of the patriarch in all except capital cases. On 
the other hand, Michael confirmed his father's edict for- 
bidding the monasteries to acquire any more real property. 
By this time a large part of the land of Eussia had come 
into the hands of the monks. The growth of the Church 
is seen in the continual increase in the number of dioceses. 
One addition, the bishopric of Astrachan, organised earlier, 



THE PATRIARCHATE 



411 



was a sign of the extension of Eussia in Asia that was 
now going on. Two dioceses in Tobolsk and Siberia were 
added (a.d. 1623). Philaret prepared a new Trebuih, or 
book of ritual,^ and other service books. 

Modern Western scholarship was now gradually trick- 
ling into Eussia, though only in slender rills, which left 
the greater part of the empire intellectually dry and 
barren. The most prominent leader in this movement 
was Peter Mogila. He had been educated at the university 
of Paris, had served as a distinguished soldier in the Polish 
war, and had subsequently taken the tonsure and retired 
to the Pechersky Monastery, of which in course of time 
he was made archimandrite. No sooner was Mogila in 
charge of this great monastery than he established a school, 
from which he sent the more promising students to uni- 
versities in Western Europe. Cyril Lucar took note of 
his intellectual activity and appointed him exarch of his 
See. Peter Mogila was more competent to appreciate the 
various aspects of the age-long controversy with Eome 
than any previous defenders of orthodoxy had been. He 
had a printing press, from which he issued editions of the 
Fathers, and service books carefully edited in the interest 
of orthodoxy, in order to counteract the service books cir- 
culated by the Uniats. This is a curious feature of the 
polemics of the Eussian Church and most significant of 
the importance attached to ritual. Very few people could 
read ; sermons were rarely preached. Apart from the 
schools, which could not have been numerous, most of the 
people got their religious instruction from the contemplation 
of pictures and from attendance at the services. The icons 
were worshipped as mere fetishes ; still, to thoughtful 
people many of them conveyed historical and allegorical 
lessons. Then the ritual was all symbolical, and the words 
of the service books embodied the dogmas of the faith. 
For most people these were the only verbal or literary 

^ The Trehnik is like the Roman ritual, a book directing the rites for 
all the sacraments except the communion, which is regulated by the ritual 
of the Liturgy, corresponding to the Roman mass. 



412 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



presentations of orthodoxy. Accordingly both parties 
manipulated them for their own purposes. The Uniats 
altered them so as to favour Eoman Catholicism, and the 
orthodox ruled out these innovations and brought them 
more into line with the authorised teaching of the Eastern 
Church. But Peter Mogila did more than this. He broke 
the silence of centuries which had brooded over the ice- 
bound sea of Greek theology, and published a Confession 
of Faith, which was written partly by himself and partly 
under his direction by the archimandrite Isaiah Trophinio- 
vich. It was subsequently revised by Meletius Syriga, 
and in its newer form it passed into the Eussian Church 
proper, where it is still acknowledged as a standard 
authority. This catechism was not only intended to 
defend the orthodoxy of the Church against Eoman errors ; 
it was also issued as a safeguard against Calvinism, which 
was now penetrating into Poland and Little Eussia. 

In the year 1643 there was held a synod at Jassy in 
Moldavia, which condemned the doctrines of Calvinism. 
Peter Mogila and four Eussian bishops signed the acts of 
this synod. Thus, while as the most learned prominent 
theologian of his country Mogila took the lead in the 
campaign against Eomanism, he was equally decided in 
his opposition to Protestantism. He was not drawn into 
the tentative alliance between the two great opposing 
forces that were contending with the papacy, which might 
have become a mighty force changing the current of the 
history of Christendom, if Cyril Lucar's large - minded 
liberal policy had been pursued. The Eussian Church 
has never been liberal. More than once reforming itself in 
morals and discipline, it is intensely conservative in 
doctrine and ritual. Thus its literature is almost wholly 
devoted to apologetics and liturgiology. Scholarship, not 
speculation, characterises its most intellectual leaders. 

There are many instances of great scholarship among 
the Eussian ecclesiastics. Thus Philaret's successor Joseph 
was celebrated for his learning, and Michael conferred 
with him and the bishops in regard to a project for 



THE PATRIARCHATE 



413 



a common codification of civil and ecclesiastical law. 
This great work was carried out, however, by boyars and 
ministers of State. 

By far the most famous of all the patriarchs of 
Moscow is Nicon, who followed Joseph after an interval. 
His long life extends over the whole of the patriarchal 
period. He was born before the first patriarch was 
appointed ; and he lived to see the patriarchate super- 
seded by the Holy Synod. The child of a peasant home 
at Nijgorod, he learned to read the Scriptures in early life, 
and he was so moved by them that he resolved to devote 
himself to the service of God. Following the custom of 
his age and Church, he understood this to mean becoming 
a monk. He left home secretly, and was about to com- 
mence his novitiate in the monastery of Jeltovodsky. But 
his father discovered him and persuaded him to return 
home, marry, and become a priest. It was against his 
own judgment, and he afterwards took the death of all his 
children as a call to return to his earlier aims. Nicon 
now induced his wife to enter a convent, and he himself 
retreated to the distant northern monastery of Solovetsky. 
After a time he sought still deeper seclusion in an island 
hermitage amid the ice of the White Sea. In the year 
1646 he submitted to the urgent entreaty of the monks 
of Kojeozersky, and was appointed to the headship of their 
monastery. This position following on the fame of his 
asceticism led to his being regarded as a leader of the 
Church, and he had to visit Moscow in connection with 
ecclesiastical affairs (a.d. 1649). There he came under 
the notice of the new tsar. Michael had died in the year 
before Nicon's appointment to Kojeozersky and had been 
succeeded by his son Alexis (a.d. 1 645), an intelligent, if not 
a strong ruler, anxious to promote moral reform, Western 
culture, and general progress. Attracted by the noble bear- 
ing and vigorous eloquence of Nicon, Alexis appointed him 
archimandrite of the Novospassky Monastery, where the 
members of the Eomanoff family were buried. He was now 
brought into frequent contact with the tsar, who came to 



414 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



lean upon his advice in regard to matters of State as well 
as in ecclesiastical business. Three years later Alexis made 
him metropolitan of Novgorod, and he then had the ex- 
ceptional honour of being consecrated by the patriarch of 
Jerusalem, who happened to be in Eussia at the time on 
one of the begging expeditions to which the once venerated 
chief bishops of the Greek Church were compelled to 
humiliate themselves. 

Nicon was now entrusted with great power. For 
instance, he had the right to enter the prisons, hear the 
prisoners' complaints, and if he thought them innocent, 
order their release ; so that his position in this respect was 
something like that of the English Home Secretary. He 
proved his heroism during a riot, when he faced the mob 
and was knocked down and left for dead in the square at 
Novgorod. Helped up by his assistants, he persisted in 
penetrating to the most dangerous part of the city, walking 
in procession with the cross, and actually entered the 
building where the rebels were assembled. Struck with 
admiration for his intrepidity, they did not molest him any 
more. The rebellion went on for a time. But at last 
Nicon was able to quell it by his personal influence. 

In matters of religion Nicon was also felt to be a great 
leader. Preaching was now almost extinct in the Eussian 
Church. Dreary homilies prescribed by authority and 
monotonously read took the place of real sermons. The 
services consisted for the most part of the chanting of 
long archaic liturgies on the part of the priests, ud intelligible 
to a later generation, or genuflections and prostrations by 
the congregation. Nicon revived the practice of preaching. 
His sermons were scriptural in teaching and full of life and 
power. Crowds gathered to hear him, and felt the spell 
of his eloquence. We may regard him as the Chrysostom 
of the Eussian Church. Nicon also reformed the order of 
the liturgical service, which had drifted into confusion, and 
improved the singing arrangements after the model of the 
Greek chanting. 

Saint worship was as characteristic of the Eussian 



THE PATRIARCHATE 



415 



Church as of the Eoman — perhaps more so. Advised by 
Nicon, Alexis convoked a solemn synod in honour of the 
three dead prelates — Job, Hermogenes, and Philip — with 
the object of bringing their remains to the church of the 
Assumption. Nicon himself went to the remote Solovetsky 
Monastery to fetch the body of the martyred Philip, who 
was addressed as though living, in an appeal from the tsar 
that he would come to Moscow and absolve the spirit of 
Ivan who was buried there. A more curious embassy was 
never despatched. It was directed to the spirit of the 
saint which was thought to be accessible at the place 
where his bones were lying ; he was requested ' to grant 
permission for their removal ; with them he would come 
himself. The spirit of the old mad tsar was also supposed 
to haunt his own mouldering remains. Therefore, of course, 
the martyr could bring relief to the lost soul by the coming 
of his body into the place where Ivan's body was buried. 
This is an application of the ideas of relic worship that 
exceeds all precedents. It illustrates the character of the 
Eussian religion of the seventeenth century in the person of 
one of the most enlightened of rulers. Then what must 
that religion have meant to ignorant peasants, villagers living 
in remote regions of the vast empire, cut off from the 
metropolis by wolf-scoured forests ? 

In the year 1653, after long resisting the entreaties 
of Alexis, Nicon accepted the position of patriarch of 
Moscow, which had been vacant for some time, since 
the death of his predecessor Joseph. We cannot always 
penetrate to the motives which lie behind the tradi- 
tional nolo episcopari ; but in the present case we can see 
that, quite apart from any ascetic abnegation of ambition, 
Nicon would perceive the serious difficulties of the position 
offered to him. Two sections of the community were already 
opposed to him — the ecclesiastics who resented his dis- 
ciplinary reforms, and the boyars who were jealous of the 
imperial favouritism that he enjoyed. But no sooner were 
his objections overborne by the entreaties of his friend and 
master the tsar, than Nicon threw himself into the duties 



416 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

of his exalted position with his oustomary fearless energy. 
In the first place, he revised the service books. It has 
been considered that his most important reform in this 
matter was a correction of the position of the fingers in 
the benediction. According to the Greek postm^e — which 
differs from the Latin — the ring finger is bent so as to 
touch the thumb and thus represent X for " Christ," ^ and 
also for the cross, while the first finger being upright and 
the second a little curved, those fingers perhaps represent 
I C, the initial and final letters of " Jesus." ^ So great 
importance was attached to this symbolism, that irregu- 
larities in regard to it were severely punished. On the 
other hand, Nicon's discipline in dealing with the prevalent 
laxity of finger posture increased the number of his enemies. 
To us his literary emendations may be more interesting. 
Alexis took the greatest interest in a revision of the 
Sclavonic version of the Bible. This was carried out under 
the directions of Nicon, who got five hundred manuscripts 
of the Scriptures and other books from Mount Athos for the 
correction of the text, which had become very corrupt.^ 
Moon's revisions of service books and Bible were confirmed 
at a synod of Greek bishops convoked by Paisius the 
patriarch of Constantinople. In sending this decision to 
Nicon, Paisius urged him to preserve the unity of the 
orthodox Church under the five patriarchs of Constanti- 
nople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Moscow, but 
at the same time begged him to be indulgent to those 
who erred in unimportant matters. , Unhappily this was 
not Nicon's way. He is grand when showing fearless 
independence in opposition to a mob, and strong and bold 

2 'Irja'ovs. In the Latin benediction the thumb and the first two fingers 
are held upright, while the third and fourth fingers are bent. 

^ One of the most important Sclavonic MSS. of the Gospels is the Ostromir 
Codex written by Gregory, a deacon of Novgorod, and dating from the year 
1056-57. The earliest dated complete Sclavonic MS. of the Gospels now 
known is assigned to the year 1144, and the earliest MS. of the whole Bible 
to the year 1499. The first printed edition is the famous Ostrog Bible 
of A.D. 1581. See Scrivener, Criticism of the N.T., 4th edit, (edited by P. 
Miller), vol. ii. pp. 158-161. 



THE PATRIARCHATE 



417 



in carrying out his purging of the Church against all 
opposition ; but the temperament which favours such 
virile virtues is not so ready to cultivate the graces of 
tolerance and gentleness, and Nicon v^as a stern ecclesiastic. 
Even his admirer Mouravieff admits that his " ardent zeal 
for eradicating all that was evil in the Church carried him 
beyond the bounds which pastoral long-suffering might 
have observed." ^ 

The lirst revised work to be printed was the Slonjehuik 
or service book, which was followed by the Skreejdl (" The 
Table "), a patristic catena of doctrines. The revision was 
not left to make its way on its merits. The old MSS. of 
the corrupt text were violently taken from the monasteries, 
where they had been used for years, and the revised 
versions forcibly substituted. Naturally such high-handed 
acts roused fierce resentment among the ignorant, conserva- 
tive monks. The result was a schism which issued in 
the large sect of the Staro-Ohriadtsi, or Basholniks, who 
have suffered much persecution for their adhesion to the 
old books. 

But while Nicon was severe in the discipline of the 
Church, he showed a large-minded tactfulness in dealing 
with foreign affairs. During his patriarchate Little Eussia 
was united with the Church and empire after a war with the 
Poles. The movement from within was led by Kmeltnitsky, 
the "Hetman," who asked the army whether they would 
belong " to the unbelieving khan (the sultan), to the Latin 
king, or to the orthodox tsar ? " He saw and he made the 
men see that independence was impossible. Faced by this 
dilemma, they shouted, " We wish to be under the orthodox 
tsar." 

It was more difficult to secure ecclesiastical submission. 
The metropolitan of Kiev and the archimandrite of the 
Pechersky Monastery had no inclination to exchange a 
merely nominal subordination to Constantinople for a very 
i^eal submission to Moscow with its masterful prelate. 
But N icon's flattering reception of the delegates from 

1 History, p. 206. 

27 



418 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



these two ecclesiastics and the presents he sent back with 
them molified their resentment against the poKcy of the 
government ; and although the union was not actually 
effected at once, it came about some thirty years later. 
Thus at last, after centuries of alienation, Kiev, the vener- 
able parent city of Christianity in Eussia, was reunited to 
the national Church to which it had given birth. This 
happy result, springing from the diplomatic skill of Mcon, 
delighted the tsar. In another way he greatly pleased 
Alexis. When Moscow was devastated by the plague, 
the patriarch bestirred himself to improve the sanitation 
of the place, and took personal care of the royal family. 
For these services the tsar bestowed on him the title of 
" Great Lord." 

Meanwhile Mcon's severity of discipline increased his 
unpopularity among the clergy. He punished intemperate 
popes with flogging and imprisonment — customary modes 
of chastisement at the time ; and he insisted on some 
degree of education in candidates for ordination, the 
minimum being ability to read and write. Then the 
boyars' jealousy led to plots and intrigues, which produced 
such an intolerable situation, that Nicon, being on one 
occasion reproached for his pride by one of the princes, 
broke out into a rage, declared that he was no longer 
patriarch, and tore off his episcopal robes. Dressed in the 
simple garments of a monk, he retired to the Krestnoy 
Monastery, near the White Sea. He now became gloomy 
and bitter in spirit, anathematising one after another of his 
enemies. A little later, on the invitation of one of the 
boyars who was friendly to him, he made a secret journey 
to Moscow, suddenly presented himself in the Church of 
the Assumption, resumed the patriarch's robe and staff of 
office, and conducted the liturgy. Here was a dramatic 
surprise for prince and people. The boyars persuaded the 
mild Alexis, who was powerless in their hands, not to 
receive his old friend in his palace. The situation became 
intolerable, and a council was summoned to deal with it. 
This was the most imposing Church council ever held in 



THE PATRIARCHATE 



419 



Eussia. The patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were 
there as well as Kussian metropolitans and bishops. Mcon 
came in his patriarchal robes. At the sight of the great man 
summoned as a defendant, Alexis burst into tears. But 
the tsar was impotent to save his old friend. A variety of 
charges were brought against him, consisting in the main of 
accusations of arbitrary, tyrannical dealings with the Church, 
on the ground of which he was formally deposed, stripped 
of his robes, and sent as a prisoner to a monastery at 
Bielo-ozero. 

Nicon lived to see the end of the patriarchate and the 
estabUshment of the Holy Synod under Peter the Great. 
He may have owed his fall from power in a measure to his 
own harshness ; but he had been a great ecclesiastic and 
a great statesman, correcting abuses in the Church and 
helping to establish the unity and power of the nation. 
He has been called the Eussian Thomas k Becket,"^ a com- 
parison that does not do justice to his merits. 

* Leroy Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, part iii. p. 164. 



CHAPTER V 



PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 

Morfill ; Rambaud ; Leroy Beaulieu ; Nicolas Polevoy, History of 
Peter the Great ; Torudin, The Roman Pope and the Eastern Popes ; 
Schuler, Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia^ New York, 1884 ; 
Merejkowski, Peter and Alexis (a well-informed historical 
novel). 

Alexis died in bhe year 1676 at the age of forty-seven, 
and was succeeded by his eldest son Feodor, a young man of 
weak health, who reigned without distinction for six years, 
and died without an heir. Sophia, the daughter of Alexis, 
a handsome, clever woman, then contrived to have herself 
proclaimed regent for her imbecile brother Ivan and her 
young half-brother Peter, a child of Alexis by a second 
wife, born in the year 1672, and therefore four years of 
age when his father died. Peter was an intelligent, keenly 
observant child. But by the cruel policy of Sophia and 
the able but unpopular minister Basil Golitsin, who was as 
her right hand, his education was deliberately neglected. 
The object of this cruel injustice was to keep him per- 
manently unfit to administer the government of the State, 
so that they might continue to share it between them. It 
was a diabolically subtle policy. But it failed utterly. At 
the age of seventeen Peter seized the reins and sent his 
unnatural sister off to a convent, where she died after 
seventeen years' imprisonment. Much of the brutality and 
coarseness of the great tsar's subsequent conduct must be 
set down to the account of his deliberately neglected 
youth. His life-story would have been very different in 
many respects if it had not been for the iniquitous dis- 

420 



PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 421 



advantages with which he set out. If it is a crime to steal 
the 1)read from a child's mouth, it is scarcely less a crime 
to deprive him of the education that is his natural right ; 
and this is the charge that must be laid to the account of 
the ambitious regent and her unscrupulous minister. 

With the commencement of the reign of Peter the Great 
we enter on the modern history of Eussia. The events 
noticed in the immediately preceding chapters will have 
disproved the popular notion that Eussia was ever entirely 
isolated and dissevered from the comity of European 
nations, excepting during the dismal three centuries of the 
Mongol possession. Previous to that time she had been 
in close contact with Constantinople. Both in Church 
and in State at the great centres of Kiev and Novgorod 
Eussian civilisation had been in line with the civilisation 
of Eastern Europe. In some respects it was even more 
advanced than that of Western Europe at the break-up of 
the Eoman Empire and during the wars of the barons. The 
Mongol invasion had swept much of this culture away, 
checked the course of national development, shut off the 
Sclavonic population from Greek and Teutonic Europe, and 
turned Eussia into a semi- Asiatic country. It took many 
generations for her people to recover from so huge and 
crushing a calamity. The vastness of the territory of 
Eussia, the thinness of its widely scattered populations, and 
the remoteness of most of them from the centres of 
enlightenment, have always resulted and must still result in 
great differences in the social conditions of the people. 
Necessarily the mass of the outlying peasants are only 
indirectly affected, if at all influenced, by the advance of 
culture in the towns. Eeligiously as well as socially, most 
of Eussia is still in the Middle Ages, that is to say, in the 
period before the Eenaissance. 

But in Moscow, Eostoff, Novgorod, and other great 
towns there was a consciousness of the larger world long 
before Peter came on the scene. Ivan the Terrible 
took decided steps towards bringing Western culture into 
Eussia. The Eoman off dynasty followed on similar lines. 



422 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



The gentle Alexis was anxious to import education and 
enlightened manners into his empire. Still, when all 
that was done in this way has received due recognition, 
it remains true that Peter the Great achieved the huge 
twofold task of restoring Eussia to Europe and introducing 
Europe to Eussia. His clear ideas and his vigorous pursuit 
of them went far beyond anything accomplished or even at- 
tempted or conceived by his predecessors in these directions. 
He aimed at modernising Eussia by bringing her into 
contact with the progressive nations of the West, and in a 
considerable degree he succeeded, though by no means to 
the extent that external appearances would suggest. We 
might compare Eussia in the time of Peter with Japan in 
our own day. In both cases we have a long-stagnant 
people suddenly stirred and roused by a rush of life from 
the progressive West. But the immediate effect is much 
greater in Japan than it was in Eussia. Whether the 
permanent results will be equally to the advantage of the 
yellow race remains to be seen. 

Peter was always fond of mechanical contrivances, and 
it was quite congenial to him to work side by side with 
the artisans in the dockyard at Deptford when he came 
over to England to learn shipbuilding. Neither his educa- 
tion nor his manners were beyond the standard of an 
English working-man of his day. But he had a great 
intellect and an indomitable will, and it was much to 
him that neither were warped or prejudiced by the con- 
ventions of the schools. Even more than Napoleon, Peter, 
though the son of an emperor, was really a self-made man. 
His European travels and the mechanical labour that so 
scandalised his courtiers had their place in his deliberate 
policy. Peter visited dockyards to learn shipbuilding, 
because he saw that Eussia needed a navy if she was to 
hold her own on the Baltic. For the same reason he 
founded his new capital close to this sea (a.d. 1703). But 
he had greater ideas and wider projects than those of naval 
defence or offence. Moscow was buried deep in the heart 
of Eussia. Before the age of railways this metropolis was 



PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 423 

quite out of touch with foreign countries. Now it was the 
design of Peter the Great to bring his country into vital 
contact with the rest of Europe. The founding of 
St. Petersburg was one important step in this direction. 
With herculean energy he did all that one man could do 
by his own action to introduce the ideas and arts of the 
advancing nations to his benighted subjects. Many 
influences from the West flowed into Eussia when Peter 
opened the door. Englishmen and Germans especially 
came in great numbers, spreading commerce and scientific 
education among the people of the towns. 

These novelties were not brought about without opposi- 
tion. While Peter was on his travels he heard of a 
dangerous revolt of the Streltsi, the choicest imperial 
troops, the Piussian " praetorian guard." The tsar hurried 
back, suppressed the insurrection, and punished the rebels 
with savage cruelty. The old Nationahst party called 
Peter " the foreign tsar," and his followers " the Germans." 
Nevertheless he did not swerve from his purpose. He was 
convinced that this was for the good of his people. Paternal 
government is of the essence of tsardom, and since Peter 
was by far the ablest man in the country, head and 
shoulders above his people, he felt justified in treating 
them as children. So we have the paradox of an uneducated 
man spreading new ideas and laying the foundations of 
civilisation and culture in a great nation. In all this 
Peter was thoroughly patriotic. There was no ground for 
any suspicion like that which sprang up in England when 
Queen Mary wished to introduce Philip's Spaniards to high 
places in the Church. The English, the Germans, the 
Dutch might come as teachers and traders to bring know- 
ledge and wealth to Eussia ; but none of them were 
appointed to posts of honour. Peter's ministers and 
officials in high positions were all born Eussians. 

The great tsar thoroughly reorganised his empire in 
military, social, and religious affairs. He dissolved the 
mutinous Streltsi, and raised a regular army of over 200,000 
men. Thus he strengthened the autocracy by increasing 



424 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

its military power. This had an influence on all depart- 
ments of State. Peter's idea was the establishment of an 
elaborate, unified organisation. Everybody was to serve 
the State — some in the army, others in the Church, the 
rest by payment of taxes. He introduced important 
changes into the social order. No doubt these were not 
all improvements. In place of the old custom of equal 
inheritance, Peter initiated the Grerman law of primogeniture; 
and the peasants lost power and rights by becoming parts 
of a great territorial system. But in one important matter 
Peter brought about a great reform. This was in the 
emancipation of woman. Hitherto the women of Eussia 
had been kept in Oriental seclusion and subjection, partly 
owing to old Byzantine influences, partly also owing to the 
effect of the long Mongolian dominance. The tsar had 
seen the very different position of woman in the West, and 
he aimed at giving similar freedom and similar rights to 
the women of his empire. He ordered that betrothal 
should take place six weeks before marriage, with a right 
to break the contract during the interval. Parents and 
guardians were compelled to swear that they were not 
making their young people marry against their will, and 
masters to do the same in the marriage of their slaves. 
Midwives were forbidden to make away with illegitimate 
children. Then there were reforms in other directions. 
Thus the praviozli, or public flogging of debtors, was 
stopped. Peter allowed domestic serfs to enter the army 
even without the consent of their masters, and he permitted 
those who had gained some money by trade to enrol 
themselves as citizens of the towns where they lived 
— also without their masters' consent. He ordered the 
Senate to prohibit the sale of peasants apart from the 
land.i 

One of Peter's changes brought Eussia into line with 
the rest of Europe in a very significant way. The old 
Eussian calendar had been dated from " the creation of the 
world," and the old Eussian year had begun in September. 
1 Morfill, p. 343. 



PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 425 



Peter reckoned by the Christian era ; the year was to 
begin in January, as with us.^ 

But some of Peter's imitations of the West were 
beyond the manners of his people. He introduced the 
" assembly," in which European costume was to be worn ; 
but it was " only a parody of Versailles." ^ Visitors from 
the West observed that men smoked in the presence of 
ladies, and that frequently noble cavaliers had to be taken 
out drunk. 

Peter also introduced reforms into the government of 
the Church. The most important of these innovations was 
the substitution of the Holy Synod for the patriarchate. 
The patriarch Adrien, who had shown little sympathy with 
the new ideas imported from the West, died in the year 
1700. Peter did not appoint any successor. He con- 
ferred on Stephen Javorski the title of " custodian of the 
patriarchal throne," while he was arranging for a new form 
of ecclesiastical government. 

Later on he organised the Holy Synod ^ for the 
supreme government of the Eussian Church. The synod 
takes the place of the patriarch. It consists of bishops 
and priests nominated by the tsar and presided over by a 
State official, called the " High Procurator," a layman, whom 
Peter preferred to be a military officer, representing the 
tsar. The procurator is popularly known as " the eye of 
the tsar." Formerly the inferior clergy were in a majority ; 
but now they are outnumbered by the bishops. The synod 
sits at St. Petersburg ; it has delegates in Moscow and 
elsewhere. It is sometimes said that the tsar is the head 
of the Eussian Church. This is true enough in fact, for 
the autocracy comprehends the Church as well as the 
State. But it is not allowed in theory, nor is it recog- 
nised in the forms of ecclesiastical order. The Oriental 

^ This must not be confounded with the question of " Old Style." The 
''Old Style" (i.e. the Julian year) still continued uncorrected in Russia, 
and is now twelve days behind the corrected year of Europe. 

2 Rambaud, p. 386. 

^ Its full title is "The Most Holy Governing Synod." 



426 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Church protests against the Eoman papacy ; it cannot set 
up a papacy of its own, which in one respect would be 
even more scandalous, since the pope is a bishop, but the 
tsar a layman. The Eussian Church is not built on the 
theory invented by Henry viii., and thoroughly lived up 
to by the imperious Elizabeth — that the king is the real 
head of the Church and as such master of the bishops. 
It agrees with thoroughgoing Protestantism in maintain- 
ing that only Christ is the Head of the Church, and it 
does not allow that He has any earthly vicar. Under 
Christ the synod is supposed to rule independently. This 
is the decent fiction. 

The establishment of the Holy Synod was justified by 
Peter on the precedent of the ancient Church councils. He 
maintained that he was reverting to precedent in having 
his Church governed by a council. But of course the 
mere revival of archaeology was the very last thing the 
daring, innovating tsar was likely to promote. Peter 
issued an ecclesiastical code which was wholly utilitarian 
in character. He rode rough-shod over customs and pre- 
cedents that did not favour his aims. With the tsar 
theories counted for nothing ; practical considerations were 
all he thought of. He argued that government by a 
council was better than autocratic authority, because it 
obviated the danger of tyranny — wilfully blind to the 
application of the same principle to his own position as 
autocrat. But he could not endure the rivalry of a 
patriarch. He had the warning example of Nicon before 
his eyes. Peter would give no second Mcon his chance.^ 
Therefore, while the abolition of the patriarch was ostensibly 
an action in favour of liberty, it was really one that crippled 

1 In Ms preamble to the order establishing the synod, Peter says : " The 
collegiate organisation would not bring on the country the troubles and 
seditions which could survive where there is one man only who is found 
at the head of the Church. . . . The people would not see the differ- 
ence between the spiritual and the temporal powers. . . . Struck with tlie 
virtue and splendour of the pastor of the supreme Church, they imagine 
that he is a second sovereign, equal in power to the autocrat and even 
superior," See Rambaud, p. 392, 



PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 427 

the independence of the Church and brought it into sub- 
jection to the State. The masterful tsar would not allow a 
Church which was as a second state within the State; 
therefore he made the Church a department of his State. 

Peter's high-handed dealings with the Church were only 
submitted to by his bishops with bitter resentment. The 
new system was endorsed by the patriarchs of the other 
parts of the orthodox Church. But we must not forget 
that these dignitaries were in the miserable condition of 
subjects of the Turkish Empire among a poverty-stricken 
people, largely dependent on the bounty of the tsar for the 
supply of their necessities. 

Peter accused his bishops of pride, and bade them 
conduct themselves more humbly. He ordered them to 
have schools in which the children of the popes were to 
be educated. Any who were not thus educated were to 
be drafted into the army. It was compulsory education 
under penalty of conscription. The sons of the nobles 
were also to attend the bishops' schools. The tsar was 
anxious to spread popular education; he had schools 
established for this purpose in every province of his 
empire, the masters of which were furnished from his 
mathematical school at St. Petersburg. He also established 
special naval and engineering colleges. But the people 
were not ripe for these improvements, and even Peter's 
herculean efforts left Eussia as a whole still far behind 
the rest of Europe. 

Such wholesale innovations forced upon a conservative 
people by authority could not but arouse opposition, 
which would look for an opportunity to express itself. 
The priests were obstinate opponents of the whole move- 
ment. No doubt Peter's knowledge that they would take 
up this attitude was one of the motives leading him to 
suppress the patriarchate and bring the Church more 
effectually under his own power. But that in turn 
provoked resentment and led to counter-plots. It is in 
the light of this condition of affairs that we must regard 
the saddest scene in the life of the tsar, the execution of 



428 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



his son Alexis. Tliis unhappy prince had incurred the 
displeasure of his father by giving way to dissolute habits 
Then he had followed the not uncommon example of an 
heir-apparent, and sided with the opposition. He had 
even done much worse. He had intrigued with Sweden 
against his father's government, though as he believed in 
the true interest of his country. In his opposition to the 
new methods of government he was aided by his mother 
Eudoxia, Peter's first wife, whom the tsar had treated 
with heartless brutality and sent to a convent. She 
had converted the convent into a court, where she wel- 
comed the disaffected, for Eudoxia was the patroness of 
the priests' party. Alexis is reported to have said, 
" I will whisper a word to the bishops. They will pass 
it on to the priests ; who will repeat it to the people, 
and everything will be as it was before."^ 

The treason was intolerable and unpardonable. 
Eudoxia was sent to another convent, where she was kept 
in strict confinement, and the tsarevitch was tried, con- 
demned, flogged, and executed — probably by the knout. 
Peter was certainly responsible for the torture and death 
of his son Alexis. It was an act of deliberate policy. As 
such it is not comparable with Ivan the Terrible's dreadful 
deed when he struck his son dead with his own hand in 
a fit of mad rage. But the whole story is a mournful 
tragedy. Weak and dissolute as he was, Alexis was led 
to believe that his father's policy was ruinous to the State 
and impious with regard to the Church. On the other 
hand, Peter saw in his son, the heir to his throne, a 
wretched opponent of the reforms to which he was 
devoting his titanic energies. The great tsar believed in 
those reforms with all his heart as necessary for the 
well-being of his country. Then how could he permit 
them to be thus traitorously checked and thwarted, with 
the certainty that when he died they would all be swept 
away ? We may pity Peter as much as we pity poor 
Alexia. 

* Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 158. 



PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 429 



Peter felt the monks to be the worst enemies of 
his reforms, and he saw the institution of monasticism 
to be socially harmful in two ways : the monasteries 
held a large part of the land of Eussia, and the monks 
were rich in the midst of the poverty of the peasants. 
Eussia was suffering, as the Eoman Empire had suffered 
in its later days, by the withdrawal of so many able- 
bodied men from the service of their country. The tsar 
did not venture to deal directly with the first of these 
evils. He did not dare to confiscate Church land. But he 
made some attempt to lessen the second by not permitting 
anybody to become a monk under the age of thirty. Then 
he crippled the power of the monasteries by restricting 
their literary influence. He forbade monks to have ink 
or pens in their cells. Men were not to shut themselves 
up to write ; they were to work at trades. On the other 
hand, Peter encouraged the literary activity of bishops, 
and in his reign Dmitri Touptalo, the metropolitan of 
Eostoff, re-edited the Menologium (the Lives of the Saints) 
and wrote theological works of his own. Other writers 
of less account also flourished in the hothouse atmosphere 
of an exotic culture which Peter had introduced into 
Eussia. 

It must not be supposed that Peter's masterfulness led 
him into narrow intolerance. The raison d'etre of his 
policy was rationalistic liberalism. He was in constant 
opposition to the prevalent inert conservatism of Eussian 
life and religion. Accordingly we may be prepared to see 
in him a certain amount of indifference to varieties of 
religious belief, and this was the case. He did not inter- 
fere with the greater part of the sect of the Easkolniks,^ 
who lived in the remote forests. He would protect the 
peaceable schismatics from popular persecution. " God 
has given the tsars power over the nations," he said, " but 
Christ alone has power over the conscience of men." ^ 
But he imposed on those members of the sect who lived 
at Moscow a double capitation tax, and required them to 

1 See pp. 441 ff. 2 Kambaud, p. 394. 



430 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

wear distinctive clothing. They must pay for the liberty 
of nonconformity ; they must live as marked men. Peter 
did not disguise his opinion that their position was an 
error, and he treated it as such. He prohibited them 
from propagating their views with threats of a penalty. 
Attendance at church every Sunday and at the Easter 
communion was made obligatory. 

The tsar protected the Capuchins at Astrakan, because, 
as Voltaire remarked, these monks were of no consequence ; 
but in the year 1718 he expelled the Jesuits from Eussia 
as dangerous politicians. Although he was particularly 
friendly with the Dutch and the English, he persecuted 
his own Protestants. For instance, a Eussian Protestant 
lady, Natasia Zima, was conducted with her husband and 
six other converts to " the terrible chancelry " and there 
cruelly tortured.^ 

Peter the Great died in the year 1725 at the age of fifty- 
three. He had compressed an enormous amount of work 
into his comparatively short life. He found Eussia remote 
from the world's progress, sunk in mediaeval barbarism, 
more Oriental than Western in life and manners. Solely 
owing to his own energy, against the wishes and feelings 
of most of his people, before his death he had the satis- 
faction of seeing his country in vital relations with the 
rest of Europe and on the road to progress. His schools 
and colleges, libraries and museums, galleries of painting 
and sculpture, only touched the few ; his canals and his 
ships brought fresh life and new energy to a larger 
number of his subjects. Peter cared nothing for pomp 
and state, had no personal dignity, no manners. He was 
tyrannous, cruel, coarse, gluttonous. His practical jokes 
were those of a rude schoolboy. On the other hand, his 
scorn of old-fashioned proprieties had its good points. 
Quite indifferent to the opinion of the orthodox, he would 
freely visit heretics and stand godfather to their children. 
Perhaps his chief claim to honour, next to the throwing 
open of his country to Europe, is his zeal for education. 

1 Rambaud, p. 394. 



PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 431 

This is seen especially in ecclesiastical matters. Peter 
aimod at giving some culture to the grossly ignorant 
parish clergy. But his autocratic dealings with the Church 
paralysed its energy. From this time onwards there is 
little to chronicle in Eussian ecclesiastical affairs. The 
sects will become active and interesting, but the orthodox 
Church ever more and more somnolent. " The Church," 
writes M. Leroy Beaulieu, " has come to be considered a 
sort of adjunct to the police, and the rehgious practices 
as police regulations."^ Therefore in thinking of the 
Church in Eussia as it has settled down subsequently to 
the establishment of the Holy Synod by Peter the Great, 
with the virtual absorption of its official life into that of 
the bureaucracy, we must entirely dismiss from our minds 
the ideas of the relations of pastor and people seen in 
England and America, or that of the French cure or 
the Irish priest and his flock. The village pope is 
miserably poor, and he has to maintain a bare livelihood 
by taking his dues from the peasants, who resent his 
visits as the calls of a tax-gatherer. They do not look 
up to him as a religious leader. He is a functionary who 
has to perform certain rites. He rarely preaches, and he 
must never do so until he has submitted his sermon to the 
judgment of an ecclesiastical superior. Nobody expects 
him to be a model of higher living than is customary 
among his neighbours. We have seen that while the 
bishops are celibates and are found in the monasteries, the 
parish priests or popes must be married men. A priest 
must marry before he can be ordained. If his wife 
dies he may not marry again. But neither should he 
continue in office as a widower. He should resign at 
once, and retire to a monastery. Eecently, however, this 
requirement has been relaxed, and there are now some 
widowed priests in Eussia. As a rule, it appears, his 
bishop finds a wife for the young postulant of priesthood. 
This curious custom has sprung out of the bishop's 
responsibility for his priests and their families. The 

* The Empire of the Tsars, part iii. p. 139. 



432 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



salary of a village pope allows him no means for saving. 
But when he dies his wife and family are not to be left 
destitute, and the bishop has them on his hands. The 
easiest way to provide for them is to pass them on to 
the deceased man's successor by giving him one of the 
daughters for his wife.^ The result is that the priests 
have become a caste. The office is hereditary in a sort of 
Levitical tribe. The position of a country pope is very 
anomalous and most unsatisfactory. He feels himself 
above the peasants, and his wife affects the dress of 
Western Europe ; but he is not received into society, and 
in this respect he is very differently situated from the 
English clergyman. "I know he gets drunk once in a 
while," said a peasant of his pope, " but he is a good 
Christian, and he is never drunk on Saturday night or 
Sunday morning." ^ 

It must be allowed that not only is the orthodox 
Church in Eussia intellectually inert ; it is a hindrance 
rather than a help to the national development. Its 
functions are ceremonial, not spiritual. The people attend 
the liturgy as by law required ; but they do not under- 
stand the old Sclavonic dialect of the service books. 
There is no idea in the Eussian Church corresponding to 
that of the Eoman Church where the priest says mass 
regardless of the attendance of the laity. The liturgy is 
supposed to be congregational; the laity must be present. 
Yet the people who stand through the weary hours of the 
lengthy ritual do not know the meaning of the words 
chanted in their hearing. This is a result of the pedantry 
of archaism that has fossilised the Church, for the Greek 
liturgies of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom were originally 
translated into Sclavonic for the express purpose of being 
understood by the congregations who took part in them. 
With the ignorant peasant, bowing to icons is the chief 
religious performance. Icons are in every house, in every 
room of every house. On entering a room a Eussian looks 

^ See Wallace, Russia (new and enlarged edit.), vol. i. pp. 64-89. 
* Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 2^6. 



PETER THE GREAT AND THE HOLY SYNOD 433 

at the icon hung in the corner facing him, and bows to it. 
That is his primary religions duty. 

As in Ireland, commercial and educational progress is 
hindered in Eussia by the multitude of saints' days. The 
dies nefas, when work is tabooed, becomes a serious handicap 
in the race of modern life. These saints' days together 
with the Sundays rob the Eussian of nearly one-third of 
his time, for they leave him only about 250 days for 
work. He would sooner work on a Sunday than on a 
saint's day. 

Pilgrimages assume enormous proportions in the Church 
life of Eussia. Kiev is now the chief centre of pilgrimages 
in the world. It has been calculated that in the year 
1886 at least a million pilgrims, each contributing a candle 
and a coin, visited this city, the shrine of primitive Eussian 
Christianity.^ Sometimes the atmosphere in a church 
becomes positively stifling, and the people are nearly choked 
by the fumes of the pilgrims' innumerable candles. Eelics 
and miracle-working icons are the special objects visited 
in these huge pilgrimages. In many convents the monks' 
occupation seems to consist simply in keeping relics and 
icons and collecting alms.^ 

1 Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 212. ^ p. 216, 



28 



CHAPTER VI 



THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN MODERN RUSSIA 

Morfill ; Rambaud ; Leroy Beaulieu ; Heard, The Russian Church 
and Russian Dissent^ 1887 ; Wallace, Russia, new edit., 1905, 
vol. i. ; Cambridge Modern History, vol. x., chap. xiii. For 
Catherine ii., Memoires of Princess Dashkoff, published by Mrs. W. 
Bradford, 1840 ; and for Alexander i., Memoires du Prince Adam 
CzartorysTci, et sa Correspondence avec VEmpereur Alexander I., 
dating from 1795 ; Sutherland Edwards, The Romanoffs, 1890 ; 
Bain, Pupils of Peter the Great, 1897. 

After the death of Peter the Great (a.d. 1725) Russia was 
disturbed by contending factions. The great tsar's widow 
Catherine succeeded to the throne, but only survived him 
for two years. Peter, the son of the ill-fated Alexis, 
followed, and soon died. Next came the uneventful reign 
of Anne, who died in the year 1740. A series of changes 
in the government now rapidly supervened, till Ehzabeth, 
the only surviving child of Peter the Great, was seated on 
the throne. Her father had introduced civihans into the 
body that managed the Church estates. Elizabeth reverted 
to the old custom and gave these estates back entirely into 
the hands of ecclesiastics. It was a time of reaction in 
favour of the Church. The empress showed herself very 
energetic in church-building, the promotion of pilgrimages, 
and the persecution of dissenters. 

Peter ill., Elizabeth's nephew and successor, meditated 
a great measure of reform. This was nothing less than 
the appropriation of the Church lands. He was not 
strong enough to carry out so stupendous an enterprise. 
But this task was accomplished by his consort and suc- 
cessor, Catherine ii. (a.d. 1762-1796). She was an able 

434 



THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN MODERN RUSSIA 435 



sovereign, of German birth and education, and therefore 
more enlightened than her predecessors, but of scandalous 
morals, who ousted her feeble husband and usurped his 
authority. Although Peter the Great acquired large practical 
knowledge in the West and set a high value on European 
science, he was always a barbarian at heart, and he mocked 
the civilisation he mimicked. But Catherine, also deservedly 
called " the Great," really understood it and endeavoured to 
introduce genuine reforms on modern lines. The specific 
reform which Peter ill. dreamed of and which Catherine 
ejffected was urgently needed. The Church had become a 
parasite on the State, a vampire sucking its life-blood, 
showing no life itself, but able to drain the life of the 
nation, fattening on the starvation of the people. An 
English contemporary writer says of the monasteries, 
"They have wrought that if any part of the realm be 
better and sweeter than other, there standeth a friary or 
monastery dedicated to some saint." ^ The number of serfs 
belonging to the monks now amounted to nearly a million. 
Catherine appointed a mixed lay and ecclesiastical commis- 
sion to arrange the transference both of the land and of its 
human property, the serfs. The one became crown land, 
and the other, remaining still in slavery, passed over to 
State ownership. In return it was ordered that a fixed 
revenue drawn from the public funds should be paid to the 
archimandrites for the support of their monks. Monasteries 
could now no longer acquire land without the sanction of 
the government. With the loss of their property the 
monks declined in independence and prestige. They also 
rapidly declined in numbers, although the number of the 
nuns is said to have been growing. There was a constant 
rivalry between the black clergy (the monks), and the 
white clergy (the parish popes), the black clergy trying to 
exercise authority over the white, who in turn endeavoured 
to evade their interference. 

Napoleon's ill-fated attack on Eussia distracted attention 
for a time from internal affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical 

1 Quoted by Moifill, p. 221. 



436 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

But its successful repulse with immense loss to the invader 
and his final overthrow were followed by a corresponding 
expansion and strengthening of the power of Eussia, which 
may be said to have been now at her zenith. Alexander I. 
(a.d. 1801—1825) showed himself at first to be progressive 
and reforming in several directions. During his reign, 
several universities, including that of St. Petersburg, were 
founded. But the administration of the whole empire was 
rotten. " Everything was corrupt, everything unjust, every- 
thing dishonest," writes the official Eussian historian when 
describing the last ten years of Alexander's reign. ^ The 
tsar now became distinctly reactionary. He allowed the 
censorship of the press to be made more rigid — a sure sign 
that discontent was rising, and that attempts to meet its 
demands were slackening. 

At this time there were 110,000 white clergy, 5,700 
black clergy, and 5,300 nuns; 27,000 churches, including 
450 cathedrals (sohors) Sind about 500 chapels, 377 monas- 
teries and 99 nunneries. The annual expenditure of the 
Church was about 900,000 roubles.^ A contest now arose 
between the Holy Synod and the government. The Church 
authority was desirous of making itself independent of 
control by the State. In this movement the synod was led 
by Seraphim, archbishop of Tver, afterwards of Moscow, 
and later of St. Petersbu"rg, where he became also president 
of the Holy Synod. He was a narrow-minded bigot, but 
astute, and he induced an excitable young ascetic, the 
archimandrite Photius, religious teacher of the school of 
cadets, to further his projects. A man of a finer type was 
Philaret, archbishop of Yaroslaff, and afterwards of Moscow, 
whom Photius denounced as a " freemason," and w^hom 
Seraphim accused of being " unorthodox " and of having 
" Lutheran " tendencies. In his early reforming period 
Alexander endeavoured to improve the wretched condition 
of the white clergy, by placing them on a fixed salary paid 
by the State, and raising the character of the whole body. 
It was with the tsar's assistance that a Bible Society was 

^ See Cambridge Modern History, vol. x. p. 420. ^ IMd. p. 422. 



THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN MODERN RUSSIA 437 

formed in Eussia after the model of the " British and Foreign 
Bible Society." During the first nine years of its existence 
this society printed 129 editions of the Bible and as many 
as 675,000 copies. In the year 1817 Alexander reorgan- 
ised the synod and put it under the authority of the 
Minister of Education, who, according to the terms of his 
appointment, " was henceforth to occupy the same leading 
position with respect to the synod, as the Minister of Justice 
with respect to the Senate." The tsar manifested some 
sympathy with mysticism ; he also came to an agreement 
with the pope for the establishment of an archbishopric at 
Warsaw, and a harmonious arrangement between the two 
Churches in that city. He may have been meditating the 
age-long question of the " union," so dear to the hearts of 
successive popes of Eome, and opening at times so promis- 
ing a prospect for much-harassed emperors. But this 
arrangement was nothing so ambitious. The two religions 
existed side by side in Poland. It was well that they should 
be at peace, each enjoying its rights and liberties. 

But all this was most objectionable to the Holy Synod, 
for it seemed to threaten the foundations of the authority 
of the hierarchy. A few years later (a.d. 1822), Seraphim, 
taking the lead in the opposition, used Photius as his 
instrument to influence the tsar. That strange personage, 
half-mediaeval saint, half-Jesuit in character, so completely 
won over Alexander that the tsar fell at his feet, kissed his 
hands, and seemed to yield entirely to his hypnotic influ- 
ence. Photius made the best of his opportunity, denouncing 
Galitzin, the Minister of Education, the Catholics, the 
Lutherans, the mystics, the secret societies, the Bible 
Society — everything that made for freedom of thought, as 
enemies both to the throne and to the Church. Alexander 
wavered ; lie would not yield at once, for he was of a 
suspicious nature. Two years passed, and then Seraphim 
himself denounced Galitzin to the tsar as the enemy of 
orthodoxy. Alexander, who was well meaning, but dreamy 
and vacillating, still resisted for a time ; but Seraphim 
was firm and uncompromising, and he had supporters. In 



438 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the end the tsar yielded. Galitzin was dismissed, and was 
succeeded by a reactionary, Shishkoff ; the independence of 
the sacred synod was restored ; and the Bible Society's 
activity was checked, though not actually suppressed till 
after Alexander's death. 

Nicholas i. (1825-1855) favoured the orthodox Church 
and the reactionaries, and persecution of nonconformists 
was now revived. Nevertheless the Uniats once again 
tried to bring the Eussian Church into the Koman com- 
munion. This most recent attempt was no more successful 
than its predecessors. In the year 1839 the Eussian 
Uniat bishops met at Polosk, and issued a memorial to the 
tsar expressing their willingness to return to the orthodox 
fold. The consequence was that a million and a half Uniats 
were forcibly brought into the Eussian Church and more 
than 2,000 churches taken over. The effect of this act of 
tyranny on Poland was most disastrous. Nicholas i. was 
a stern despot who drove the synod with a tight rein. 

Alexander ii. (1855— 1881) is deservedly famous for 
his great act of humanity in the emancipation of the serfs. 
In earHer ages the country people had consisted of three 
classes — independent peasant farmers, free hired labourers 
who could move at will from place to place, and slaves. But 
in course of time aU three had become serfs, and the serfs 
were really nothing but slaves. Their lot was much worse 
than that of the villeins of f eudaKsm in the West. In Eussia 
there was no idea of mutual obligations subsisting between 
the lord and his people, no family bond. Serfs were bought 
and sold like cattle. The same advertisement would offer 
cows and horses, capable working-men and handsome young 
women for sale. This marketing was quite regardless of 
relationship. A family might be broken up and its several 
members sold to different masters.^ The serfs were flogged 
and tortured and outraged with impunity. When extra- 
vagance and bad public finance were bringing many of the 
aristocracy to the verge of ruin, the serfs had to work 
the harder. This slavery of white men and women in 

^ "Wallace, Russia, neAV edit. vol. ii. pp. 114 ff. 



THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN MODERN RUSSIA 439 

Eussia was as bad as the worst form of negro slavery 
in America. 

Nicholas had meditated putting a stop to the dreadful 
social condition of his empire that serfdom involved ; but it 
was left for his son to carry out the great reform. This 
was done in the year 1861. The landowners received an 
indemnity from the State, and the serfs were set free from 
all bondage to them ; at the same time the land of the 
village commune was made the actual property of the 
peasants. 

Three years later (a.d. 1 864), Alexander released the 
clergy from their caste bondage. The Church was now 
thrown open to all classes. Nevertheless, as there were no 
parsonages and glebes attached to the parishes, and since 
each pope's house and the land he cultivated was his own 
property, it still remained necessary for a newly appointed 
priest to marry his predecessor's daughter — unless his own 
father was a priest whom he might succeed — in order to 
have a house to live in and a field to live by. 

Some other shght changes have since been effected in 
the social life of the people. Count Dmitri Tolstoi, when 
both High Procurator and Minister of the Interior, multi- 
phed the parish schools and put them under the direction 
of the local clergy. In the reign of Alexander ii. there 
were as many as 20,000 such schools — on paper. Subse- 
quently the Zemstvos established secular schools, before 
which the church schools shrank up and withered away. 
One of the reactionary measures of the notorious Pobie- 
donostsef was the restoration of the church schools. In 
1884 he stated to the Holy Synod that the parish schools 
were especially intended to strengthen the people in the 
foundations of the faith ! These schools were then placed 
under the direction of the Holy Synod.^ 

There is tragic irony in the fate of the tsar who 
conferred the greatest boons on his people. Alexander had 
found his people really no nation, divided by a gulf of social 
cleavage, the workers mere bondsmen to the lords. At one 

^ Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 265. 



440 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



stroke he had granted freedom, if not social equality. His 
reward was assassination by agents of one of the secret 
societies formed in the interests of liberty. Nothing could 
demonstrate more clearly the deep-rooted disease of the body 
politic. And yet improvements were still going forward. 



CHAPTER VII 



RUSSIAN SECTS 

Books named in Chap. II. ; also Wallace, Russia, new edit., 1905, 
vol. i. ; W. H. Dixon, Free Russia, 1 870 ; Heard, The Russian 
Church and Russian Dissent, 1887 ; Le Raskol, Essai sur les Sectes 
religieuses en Russie, 1878 ; Elkington, The Doulchobors, 1903 ; 
Dalton, Der Stundismus in Russland, 1896. 

Nonconformity is as important a feature of the history 
of religion in Eussia as it is in England. But, except in 
the case of the more recent sects which owe their origin 
to Western Protestant influences, Eussian dissent is very 
different from English dissent. The typical English non- 
conformist is an opponent of ritualism and a champion of 
liberalism. He represents the Puritan of the seventeenth 
century. But the typical Eussian nonconformist is a 
martyr to a rigorously conservative ritual. Although 
there are now in Eussia sects of an opposite character, 
the " Old Dissent " arose as a protest against the supposed 
innovations in the ritual of the Church introduced by 
Nicon's revision of the service books. It is known as the 
Raskbl (a Eussian word meaning " division " or " schism ") ; 
and its adherents are called Baskolniks (" schismatics "). 
The movement, which originated in the seventeenth century, 
soon assumed vast proportions. It numbers 1,500,000 
persons in the columns of the census ; but many more 
belong to it who do not make this open profession for 
fear of persecution, and it is estimated to contain really 
some twelve or fifteen million members. These consist 
almost entirely of peasants, or persons who have sprung 
from the peasant classes. None are found among the 

441 



442 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

upper classes, who look down on the Easkolniks with 
contempt. But not a few of them are rich men. They 
engage in trade, especially in money - lending. Sober, 
honest, industrious, thrifty, they are able to surpass the 
orthodox Eussians in the competition of life. They are 
regarded by the peasants with the respect due to their 
character as the more religious people of the land. It 
is said that if you come upon an especially clean, well- 
kept cabin in Eussia, the proprietor will turn out to 
be an old dissenter. The Easkolnik people have been 
credited with " erudite ignorance." 

But the movement did not spring from any new 
spiritual awakening, anything like a revival, such as we 
see to have been the source of most of our English and 
American separate Christian denominations. It started 
purely in protest against new phrases and rubric directions, 
and these were not innovations on sacred originals, but 
corrections of verbal corruptions and changed usages which 
Nicon and the scholars who helped him regarded as marks 
of degeneration. Thus the supposed novelties were really 
reversions to antiquity. But this was not admitted by 
the ignorant peasants, and just as Jerome's Yulgate, which 
was a corrected Latin version of the Bible that Pope 
Damasus had ordered because the various popular versions 
were very corrupt, was nevertheless received with suspicion 
and hatred by the mutitude ; and, as the English Eevised 
Version has also been regarded by most ignorant Bible 
readers with dislike, so Nicon's correction of the service book 
was treated as an irreverent meddling with holy words and 
customs. The protest was pressed to the smallest minutiae. 
Thus one writer says, " In such a year wiseacres commenced 
to say, * Lord have mercy on us,' instead of ' Lord have 
mercy on us.' " The Easkolniks were most insistent in 
holding to the incorrect spelling of our Lord's name as 
" Issus," instead of accepting Nicon's correction of it to 
"lissus."^ But perhaps the most hated innovation, or 
rather reversion to antiquity, was the substitution of the 

^ The second " i " is pronounced soft like the tj in 'I??<roCj. 



RUSSIAN SECTS 



443 



sign of the cross with three fingers for the sign of the 
cross with two fingers. To accept this meant that children 
would have to unlearn a practice that had been taught 
them at their mother's knee. Such an unsettling of 
domestic religion was not to be thought of. On these 
and other grounds of the same nature, of which of course 
they found an abundance in a corrected version of the 
service books, the Easkolniks broke off from the ancient 
Church of Eussia. It is their opponents who call them 
by the name that brands them with the sin of schism. 
The title that they take for themselves is Staro-viery, which 
means " Old Believers"; they are the people who cling to 
the faith of their fathers. Yet deep as is the gulf of division 
thus caused, and bitter as were the mutual recrimina- 
tions formerly hurled across it, there is no difference of 
theological ideas separating the two parties. Both hold to 
the only two standards of faith required by the orthodox 
Church — the Bible and the Nicene Creed ; nor do they 
differ at all in their interpretations of Scripture or creed. 

These old dissenters therefore have nothing in common 
with Protestantism. Their origin is in no way comparable 
with the contemporary rise of various sects in Western 
Europe. They are Eussian of the Eussians. 

In course of time various influences led to remark- 
able developments among the " Old Believers " in very 
different directions. One thing, however, they shared in 
common : they were all regarded as schismatics, and there- 
fore they were all not only denounced by the Church but 
regarded with disfavour by the government. It was not 
forgotten that the corrections, or innovations, were intro- 
duced by order of the tsar and forced on the Church by 
imperial authority. Here then was a State violation of the 
customary order of the Church. The Easkolniks resented 
the innovations themselves, and they were indignant at the 
arbitrary and tyrannical manner in which they were made 
compulsory. It was natural enough that people should deem 
it a sacrilegious outrage for government officials to march 
into the churches, seize the venerated service books, deposit 



444 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



others in place of them, and by order of the tsar command 
the town and village popes to use the novel rubrics. Later 
on, when Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate and 
substituted for that semi-independent office his own nomi- 
nated Holy Synod, and when the orthodox Church in 
Eussia passed more than ever under the control of the 
State and its bureaucratic government, the dissenters who 
stood outside these movements came to represent to some 
extent the Free Church idea. They were not attached to 
the State ; their services were not regulated by a government 
department. 

The Kaskol obtained new vigour from another source — 
popular resistance to Peter the Great's Western inno- 
vations. Here it was on solid ground. The European 
customs were novel to Eussia, and many now rallied to the 
Old Behevers. At first the movement had been confined 
to Moscow ; now it spread all over Eussia. Its flames were 
fanned by a breeze of prejudiced patriotism. Thus the 
Old Believers stood for Old Eussia and Old Eussian ways. 
They regarded Peter's novelties as portents of the approach- 
ing end of the world and advent of Antichrist.^ This idea 
of Antichrist bulks largely in the Easkol. Some perhaps 
identify him with the tsar ; but to the majority who 
believe in his presence he is a mysterious personage existing 
somewhere in the world, to whose malignant machinations 
the corruptions of the Church and the troubles of the 
nation are due. Formerly some maintained that the true 
Peter, " the white Tsar," had perished at sea, and that a 
Jew, a son of Satan married to a German wife, had usurped 
his place. Hence this German invasion ! 

Old Believers were found objecting to everything in 
the way of European innovations. They objected to the 
change of the calendar; they objected to the change of 
dress — Peter's substitution of European costume for the 
Oriental gowns formerly worn by Eussians ; they objected 
to the practice of shaving. This latter novelty was 
regarded as distinctly heretical, disfiguring man who was 

^ Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 299. 



RUSSIAN SECTS 



445 



created in the image of God and " likening him even unto 
cats and dogs." ^ So serious was the objection felt to be, 
that Peter got Dmitri of Eostoff to write a treatise on 
" The Image and Likeness of God in Man," showing its 
spiritual character. It had little or no effect on the Old 
Believers. " The image of God is the beard, and the 
likeness the moustache," wrote one of these fanatics as late 
as the year 1836. There have been martyrs to the beard. 
In the year 1874 a recruit was punished with seven years' 
imprisonment for mutiny because he refused to be shaved. 
This is the Nemesis of image worship. The image 
worshipper can only conceive of God in the form of a con- 
ventional icon ; and that form, with the bearded aspect 
of the representation of the First Person in the Trinity, 
becomes itself sacred in a man. 

The old dissenters divided into two parties soon after 
the origin of the schism. The cause of this division was 
the extraordinary situation produced by a lack of bishops. 
In the days of Nicon only one priest stood for the old books 
— Paul of Kolomna. This man was imprisoned for his 
contumacy, and when he died in prison there was nobody 
in all the Easkol who was competent to administer the 
sacraments. The difficulty which now stared the Old 
Believers in the face was entirely novel, quite without 
parallel. Other schisms in the Church which did not deny 
episcopacy had carried off bishops with them. Thus there 
were Marcionite bishops in the early Church who were 
able to build up a Marcionite hierarcy. On the other hand, 
the Montanists owed their very existence in great part to 
a protest against the root idea of an authoritative priest- 
hood, and in this they were followed by the Protestant 
bodies on the continent, Lutheran as well as Eeformed. 
The controversies that have been fought on the question 
of the consecration of Archbishop Parker may enable 
Anghcan High Churchmen to sympathise with the perplexity 
of the Eussian Old Believers. But the Eussian dissidents 
had nobody that they could attempt to put forward on any 
1 Ibid. p. 305. 



446 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

pretext as a bishop in the apostolical succession. And yet 
they were extreme ritualists, with whom the validity of 
the sacraments depended absolutely on consecration by an 
episcopally ordained priest. Here was a dilemma of vital con- 
sequence to the life of the Easkol. How was it to be met ? 

Two answers of opposite character were given to the ques- 
tion thus suddenly raised and urgently demanding immediate 
settlement. One was that priests must be obtained, and 
this course was found more or less practicable in course of 
time by renegades from orthodoxy deserting to the Easkol. 
But the more uncompromising Old Believers refused to 
admit the validity of the priestly grace of men who had 
been in the degenerate Church, and who were tainted by 
their usage of the corrected service books. These people 
came to the appalling conclusion that there was no true 
apostolic succession left in the world, no valid priesthood 
at all. The .holy fire on the altar was extinguished ; and 
there was nobody left capable of rekindling it. The two 
groups were known respectively as the Popbftshy, or " priest 
people," and the Bef-popbftshy or " no - priest people." 
Subdivisions followed, so that the Easkol cannot be 
regarded as a sect or denomination ; it is an amorphous 
mass of very divergent sects that are out of communion 
with the State Church. 

The Popbftshy long laboured under the disadvantage of 
depending for its ministry on the precarious chance of 
desertions from the orthodox Church. At length this 
humiliating and harassing condition has been superseded by 
the establishment of an independent episcopacy, and the 
Old Behevers of the priest party now have their own 
ordained popes. In the year 1846 they obtained a metro- 
politan in the person of a Greek, Ambrose, formerly a 
bishop in Bosnia, who had been deposed by the patriarch of 
Constantinople. This man joined the Old Believers and 
was accepted by them as their ecclesiastical head. Unable 
to live in Eussia, owing to the attitude of the government 
towards the Easkol, he settled at a place called "White 
Fountain," in Austria, near the Eussian border. The 



RUSSIAN SECTS 



447 



course was now clear for a complete organisation of the sect. 
Ambrose at once proceeded to create an entire hierarchy. 
But this was not accepted without demur by all the com- 
munity. They stood for Eussian isolation, Eussia for the 
Eussian. But here was a Greek living in Austria administer- 
ing the affairs of the Old Believers. If there were war 
between Austria and Eussia, what would happen ? The 
position was most objectionable. Accordingly in the year 
1868 a council of this branch of the Easkol was held 
at White Fountain ; but it only led to an accentuation of 
the differences and left matters worse than before. The 
stiffer members of the priestly party refused to accept the 
newly imported priesthood, and preferred to go on as before 
relying on their chance to obtain deserters from among the 
priests of the orthodox Church in Eussia. They could have 
no respect for priests of this character. Among the Old 
Behevers the priests have a lower place even than that of 
the village popes in the orthodox Church. They are treated 
as mere hirelings, as men of no importance on their own 
account, only used to give efficacy to sacraments. 

The Bef-'popbftsyj the " no-priest " party, took very 
different lines. They organised a church without sacra- 
ments — excepting the sacrament of baptism, which could 
be administered by laymen. They met this anomalous 
situation in various ways. Some simply bowed to the 
inevitable, accepted the deprivation as a judgment of 
heaven, and waited for better times. They were like a 
Western people suffering from a papal interdict. This was 
the most obvious and sensible position to take up. It 
exactly agreed with the logic of the situation. But fanatics 
caricatured it ridiculously. Thus there were the " Gapers," 
who would stand on Holy Thursday with their months 
open waiting for the angels to feed them. 

The most serious question which rose out of this 
anomalous situation was concerned with the sacrament of 
marriage. If all sacraments were now in abeyance owing 
to the absence of true priests to administer them, marriage 
was impossible, for this too was a sacrament. The recent 



448 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



contrivance of civil marriage was not then in existence, and 
if it had been, rigorous sacramentarians who were inchned 
to regard the government as Antichrist would not have 
submitted to it. Accordingly all marriage was forbidden 
by the no-priest party. Some understood this requirement 
of celibacy in a pure, ascetic sense, and anticipated the end 
of the world by the cessation of births. Others accepted it 
as an excuse for illicit connections, which, though they 
admitted them to be sins, they regarded as lesser sins than 
marriage by a priest tainted with the corruption of the 
orthodox Church. To some the monstrous position thus 
brought about became a horror which should be put an end 
to at any cost. There were child-killers, who sent young 
infants straight to heaven in order to save them from life 
in a world now subject to Antichrist. People, known as 
" clubbers," battered old men and women to death, quoting 
our Lord's saying, " The kingdom of heaven suffereth 
violence, and the violent take it by force." One sect, 
known as the Philippoftshy , sought redemption by suicide. 
Whole families, whole villages, put themselves to death. 
The mania was propagated by prophets, who stood by to see 
that none shrank back in weakness from the universal 
self-immolation. Some of these people practised " fiery 
baptism," in plain words incendiarism and death by burn- 
ing. A family shuts itself up in its cottage ; brushwood 
is heaped about it ; the prophet sets fire to the fuel ; 
and the house and all within it are burnt. Then there 
were the IsJcdleli Khristdb — " Christ seekers," who went 
about seeking Christ and sometimes beheved they had 
found Him in a prince, or perhaps a peasant. One of the 
most curious forms that the association of the idea of Anti- 
christ with the tsar's government took is said to have been 
the veneration of the image of Napoleon secretly treasured 
in the home. There are to be found in Eussia pictures 
representing the French emperor ascending to heaven 
surrounded by his marshals. It was rumoured that he 
was not dead, that he had escaped from St. Helena, and that 
he was in Siberia by Lake Baikal. 



RUSSIAN SECTS 



449 



Others, taking a more moderate course, but influenced 
by the same principles, fled from the contaminated haunts of 
civilisation and buried themselves in deep recesses of the 
forests. In 1850 Nicolas i. had the cells of the forest 
dissenters destroyed. The Strdnniki, or " Eunners," refused 
to have any fixed abode in this world of Antichrist. They 
were pilgrims and strangers, constantly running from place 
to place. Fortunately there were lay brothers living in 
the towns and villages and working at trades, from the 
proceeds of which the Slite were supported during their 
peripatetic life. The Theodosians would not eat or drink 
with the profane. Another sect, the PomortsJcy, were more 
liberal. They would not pray for the " imperator," for that 
would be to make the tsar Antichrist. But they would pray 
for the " tsar " under this more modest title. In the present 
day many of the Old Believers of the " no-priest " party 
are less rigid than formerly. They will permit marriage 
as a civil bond ; but, since it is not a sacrament, they hold 
that its continuance is subject to mutual consent. 

Too much importance has been given to the vagaries 
of the more extravagant sects which are not reckoned as 
part of the Easkol. Similar phenomena have appeared in 
America, and yet we do not regard them as characteristic 
of American religion. The same must be said of those 
who went into the opposite direction to the ascetics, and 
practised free love " on principle." The ShaJcouni or 
" Jumpers," the dervishes of Christendom, cannot be re- 
garded as Christian at all if they are guilty of the practices 
with which they are charged. The performance from 
which they derive their name may be childishly innocent, 
although it borders on insanity and has no real religion in 
it. They stand in circles, men and women facing one 
another, and jump, panting, sobbing, shouting, screaming 
they jump higher and higher, each one striving to be the 
highest jumper ; when the excitement is most intense they 
break up and take their own courses, some whirling madly 
round, others standing transfixed as in catalepsy. The com- 
mon belief is that an indescribably shameless scene follows. 
29 



450 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

The most amazing sect is that of the Khlysty, the 
members of which are said to have invented a horrible 
ritual for the Eucharist, from which in its normal form 
they are excluded by their Easkol tenets. They are said 
to hail an unmarried woman in their orgiastic dance as 
Bogorbdista, " mother of God," and to address her with 
the words, " Thou art blessed among women. Thou shalt 
give birth to a Saviour." If the young woman becomes a 
mother and her child is a girl, the infant is brought up to 
succeed as a new Bogorodista ; if it is a boy it is regarded 
as Christ. This Christ child is said to be killed at the 
altar and its flesh and blood eaten for the Eucharist. 
M. Leroy Beaulieu quotes several Eussian authorities in 
support of these charges, which lead him to the conclusion 
that " there is much to show that these stories are not pure 
inventions." 1 But we must remember that exactly the 
same things were said about the early Christian Agape 
by pagan adversaries, and everybody knows that the 
libels were absolutely baseless. Not long ago there were 
riots in Austria, in which Jews were murdered on the 
ground that they had killed and eaten a Christian child at 
the Passover. Again and again in the course of history 
similar charges have been brought against obnoxious sects. 
On the other hand, not only has a grave mass of testimony 
been brought against the Khlysty ; but it must be acknow- 
ledged that in many parts of Kussia the peasantry are 
extremely ignorant and little removed from barbarism. If 
these awful things are done even in the present day, they 
must be regarded as survivals of the dark vices of paganism 
among people who were never truly Christianised or who 
have relapsed from Christianity to practical heathenism. 
The Church cannot afford to hold up her hands in holy 
horror at these abominations; for it is the neglect of 
preaching and teaching, and the conduct of her services 
purely as ceremonies apart from spiritual thought and life, 
that have left the poor people to become the prey of evil 
influences. Nevertheless it is probable that the vilest of 

^ 0])us cit. p. 420. 



RUSSIAN SECTS 



451 



these practices, if carried on at all, are very rare indeed, 
and that some of those communities in which they were 
once found are now quite clear of them. 

There is one sect, however, the nature of whose doings 
cannot be doubted. This consists of the Skopsty, the 
Eunuchs," the members of which may be recognised by 
their pallid faces, thin voices, and unmanly bearing. Ee- 
garding marriage as impossible owing to the failure of 
sacramental grace, they aim at removing all difficulties in 
that direction by mutilating themselves. This is not done 
to them in childhood, but after attaining to manhood, when 
the operation is very serious. Some of them have children 
first, for the propagation of the sect. But they are found 
in two grades. There are some to whom marriage is 
allowed ; and others, the elect, become eunuchs. The elect 
are credited with direct inspiration from God with the 
gift of prophecy, which issues in ecstasy. But in daily 
life they are the mildest and simplest of men. 

None of these extravagant sects can be called Chris- 
tian. They have attracted much attention on account of 
their eccentricities and owing to the sensational descrip- 
tions of them that have appeared in popular books. But 
they are not symptomatic of the Easkol or of religion in 
Eussia. 

Of an entirely different character are the movements 
carried on among earnest Christian people of high character, 
the very salt of the land. The most important of these 
Eussian dissenters are the Mohicans'^ and the Doukhohors 
(" Spirit - wrestlers "). These two bodies have much in 
common, and their members pass freely from one to the 
other. They not only stand outside the State Church like 
the Easkol, but they entirely .repudiate the hierarchical and 
sacerdotal system of the orthodox communion. They reject 

1 Said to be so named as "milk-drinkers" from their habit of taking 
milk and food prepared from milk on the fast days when it is prohibited by 
the orthodox Church, but more probably so called after the name Molot- 
chnaya, a river in the south of Russia, in the neighbourhood of which they 
once flourished. 



452 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



episcopacy and sacramentarianism, and they are altogether 
opposed to rites and ceremonies. Their aim is to promote 
spiritual religion by spiritual means. Both of them rely 
upon the Bible ; but while the Molokans do so exclusively, 
the Doukhobors also appeal to the inward testimony of 
the Spirit. We may compare the one party with the 
Presbyterians and the other with the Society of Friends. 
They both call themselves Istinie Khristiane (" True " or 
" Spiritual Christians "). In their rejection of sacrament- 
arianism they are the direct opposite of the Easkolniks, 
who are fanatics of ritual. "The Easkolnik," they say, 
" will die a martyr for the right to make the sign of the 
cross with two fingers ; we do not cross ourselves at all, 
either with two or with three fingers ; we strive to attain 
a better knowledge of God." ^ These people reject all the 
characteristic forms of Eussian worship, not only the 
repeated crossing of themselves by the worshippers, but 
the genuflections and prostrations {poTcloni) which are so 
prominent in the religious observances of Eussia. They 
will have nothing to do with icons. " God is a Spirit," 
they say, "and images are but idols. A picture is not 
Christ ; it is but a bit of painted board. We believe in 
Christ, not a Christ of brass, nor of silver, nor of gold, the 
work of men's hands, but in Christ, the Son of God, Saviour 
of the world." 2 

It is difficult to trace the origin of these sects. In the 
year 1689, KuUmann, a disciple of Jacob Boehm, was burnt 
at Moscow ; in 1710 Procopius Lupin was condemned for 
asserting that the Church had lost the true spirit of 
Christianity ; and in 1714 Dmitri Tvaritenev was convicted 
by a synod of spreading Calvinistic ideas. It is reasonable 
to suppose that Eussian Protestantism had some connection 
with the Protestantism of Germany and Switzerland, which 
it resembles to a great extent; but this connection has 
not been definitely traced out.^ 

The Molokans ascribe the origin of their movement to 

1 Heard, Russian Ghurch and JRussian Dissent, p. 274. 
« Ibid. p. 275. 3 2Ud. pp. 276-7. 



RUSSIAN SECTS 



453 



the visit of an English physician to Moscow in the reign of 
Ivan the Terrible, who introduced the reading and study 
of the Bible. It would appear that it is more owing to 
this Bible study by Eussians themselves than to any direct 
Protestant evangelisation that they came to adopt scriptural 
ideas of Christianity. And yet the thorough protestantism 
of the confession of faith they presented to the government 
shows that the same ideas were in them that were working 
in the continental Calvinists and Enghsh Puritans. This 
confession concludes with the following statement : " Besides 
the holy sacraments, we accept the Word of God and 
inward faith as our guides. We do not consider ourselves 
as not sinful, nor as holy, but work out our own salvation 
with fear and trembhng, in the hope of attaining it 
solely, and alone, through belief in Jesus Christ, the only 
begotten Son of God, and the fulfilment of the commands 
of the Lord ; we have no power of ourselves to effect this, 
but obtain it only through living faith in our intercessor 
and redeemer, Jesus Christ."^ Nothing could be more 
completely evangelical than that. Even the reference to 
the sacraments refers only to their symbolical character. 

Mr. Wallace gives us an interesting account of the 
Molokans drawn up from personal enquiries among mem- 
bers of the sect. The results of the enquiries agree in 
the main with what we learn from other sources. They 
show that these people take for their model the early 
Apostolic Church as depicted in the New Testament, and 
reject all later authorities. They have no hierarchy and no 
paid clergy. Each congregation chooses one presbyter and 
two assistants, who must be men of exemplary Hfe well 
acquainted with the Scriptures, and whose duty it is to take 
pastoral oversight of the religious and moral welfare of the 
flock. They meet on Sundays in private houses— church- 
building by heretics being forbidden — and spend two or 
three hours in singing, prayer, reading of Scripture, and 
conference on religious topics. A member will state some 

* Haxthausen, The Russian Empire (trans, by R. Farie, 1856), quoted by 
Heard, p. 276. 



454 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



religious difficulty. The brethren then discuss the ques- 
tion and decide it by appeal to Scripture, which they know 
well and can quote freely. The moral disciphne of this 
Church is very strict. It has been disturbed from time to 
time by the appearance of fanatical prophets, but its 
members have had the good sense to see through them 
and not to be led astray. Its numbers are considerable, 
perhaps amounting to several hundred thousand.^ 

In the year 1814 one of the leading Molokans 
among the colony by the Molotchnaya was arrested for 
proselytising and thrown into prison. Per the most part 
the Eussian government has followed the example of 
the broad-minded Eoman Empire in leaving each religious 
community undisturbed so long as it remained quiet and 
self-contained. Even the Church in Eussia, with all the 
rigour of its boasted orthodoxy, does not trouble to follow 
the example of the Eoman Catholic Inquisition and enquire 
into the private opinions of people, if those opinions are 
kept private. This nonchalance with regard to heresy is 
a natural consequence of an exclusive regard for ritual. 
Where religion is almost wholly an external affair, it 
logically follows that ideas count for little or nothing. 
But the case is altered immediately a heretic bestirs him- 
self to spread his notions abroad, because the result may 
be not only to poison the minds of the orthodox, but 
even to lead them to break from the Church and its 
usages. 

In course of time the colony at Molotchnaya became 
very much disorganised. Twenty years later (a.d. 1834) 
a government enquiry was said to have resulted in con- 
victing them of abominable practices. But this must 
not be accepted as any real proof of guilt. There is no 
doubt that the Molokans generally are people of most 
worthy character. Still, Nicholas I. took advantage of the 
finding of the enquiry to order all people of both sects, 
the Doukhobors as well as the Molokans, to return to the 
orthodox Church on pain of exile. As they would not 

^ Russia, new edit. vol. i. chap, xvii. 



RUSSIAN SECTS 



455 



yield, he ordered them to be transported to the Caucasus 
(a.d. 1840). There the Molokans have built villages and 
become prosperous in their industry and thrift. 

The Doukhobors have more mystical tendencies. 
Possibly they inherit ideas and influences from the 
Bogomiles, and so continue that tradition of Protestantism 
in the Eastern Church which was long cherished by the 
Paulicians in Armenia. As " champions of the Spirit " the 
Doukhobors are less bound to the letter of Scripture than 
the Molokans. Their doctrine of the indwelling Christ, so 
rich and fruitful when spiritually accepted, has been taken 
too literally by some of their people. Kapoustine, a dis- 
tinguished leader of the body, gave prominence to the idea 
that Christ is born again in every believer, while he taught 
the immanence of God in all mankind. His theology was 
Adoptionist. God descended into J esus and made Him Christ 
because He was the purest and most perfect of mankind. 
From generation to generation, however, this incarnation 
has been repeated. " Thus," Kapoustine said, " Sylvan 
Kolisnisk, of whom the older among you know, was Jesus ; 
but now, as truly as the heaven is above me and the earth 
under my feet, I am the true J esus Christ your Lord ! " He 
was taken at his word and adored, for the Eussian peasant 
is credulous. Such an aberration, however, is not charac- 
teristic of the community as a whole. It is merely a 
fanatical perversion of its central principle — a principle 
which it shares with the soberest of Quakers. The Doukh- 
obors are abstainers from alcohol, non-smokers, and for 
the most part vegetarians. Communism is with them a 
religious principle.^ 

The first known apostle of the doctrine of the Doukh- 
obors was a returned soldier, or a German prisoner, who 
appeared at a village in Ukraina about the year 1740. 
Therefore the sect is more recent than the kindred body of 
the Molokans. They are said to have issued a confession 
of faith in the year 1791. By the end of the eighteenth 
century they had spread from Moscow to the Volga. 

* Elkington, The Doukhobors, p. 147. 



456 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Persecuted by the Tsar Paul on political grounds, many 
were exiled to Siberia. 

In the year 1797 the Doukhobors were savagely 
persecuted with the knout, the slitting of their noses, 
imprisonment in small cells, and hard labour. The ground 
of this persecution was a charge of attempting to convert 
the orthodox to their heresy. Senator Laputkin wrote in 
1806, "No sect has up to this time been so cruelly 
persecuted as the Doukhobortsi ; and this is certainly not 
because they are the most harmful." ^ Alexander L, being 
more tolerant of dissent than his predecessors, granted 
these people land near the Sea of Azoff. Unhappily a 
division took place among them in the year 1886, followed 
by a lawsuit, which resulted in the banishment of the 
defeated party to Siberia. A more unhappy episode in 
the history of a persecuted church has rarely been recorded 
in history. They had not profited spiritually by Alex- 
ander's clemency. But to their credit it should be added 
that the appeal to the law was made by quite a minority 
of the sect ; the majority suffered for no fault of their own. 
Soon after this they experienced a religious revival. In 
recent days they have been persecuted — if that word may 
still be used — by the government for refusing military 
service. But in justice to the tsars it should be admitted 
that where conscription exists it must be enforced. The 
fault is in the odious system. This has led to the emigra- 
tion of Doukhobors and the establishment of a colony of 
them in Canada. 

The one Eussian sect that is certainly an offshoot of 
Western Protestantism is the sect of the Stundists. It 
originated in the direct influence of a colony of German 
settlers near Odessa. Among these colonists were some 
who called themselves " Friends of God," and met for the 
reading of the Bible during their leisure hours ^ under a 
leader named Michael Eatuzny. Their principles were 
those of a simple evangelical faith together with the special 

^ Elkington, The DouJchohors, p. 248. 

* Hence the name "Stundist" from Stunden, hours. 



RUSSIAN SECTS 



457 



tenets of the Baptist. In a word, they were German 
Baptists. These Teutonic emigrants were essentially mis- 
sionaries in spirit, because they were genuine Christians. 
At first they only attempted to influence their neighbours 
morally and spiritually, without making any effort to 
detach them from the orthodox Church. But as Eussian 
converts began to gather about them, these followers felt it 
necessary of their own accord to break away from the national 
Church and found independent communities. Thus the 
movement spread. From Odessa and the government of 
Kherson it passed on to the neighbouring provinces of 
Ekaterinoslaff and Kiev. The Stundists are a sober, frugal, 
industrious, intelligent, peaceable people, obedient to the 
laws, and exact in the payment of the taxes. They are 
said to advocate an equal division of the land, and they 
may have socialistic tendencies. But they have not tried 
to put these views in force by revolutionary methods. If 
the Eussian autocracy had been broad-minded and far- 
seeing it would have welcomed the appearance of such 
a people as the best harbinger of the regeneration of 
the country. Instead of this the government has dealt 
with them harshly, breaking up their communities and 
scattering the individual members. This policy, the aim 
of which is to destroy the heresy, has had the very 
opposite effect. It has sown the seed broadcast. Every 
exiled Stundist is a missionary of evangelical truth in the 
district to which he is sent. Stundism is the only religious 
novelty that has appeared in the south of Eussia. All the 
other schisms and heresies arose at Moscow or farther north 
or west. But, thanks to the poKcy of the government, 
this promising awakening of religious life is now to be 
met with in widely separated parts of the empire. It is 
spreading rapidly in the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg. 
Amidst the terrible troubles with which the realm of the 
tsar is oppressed, some see the greatest hope in this 
remarkable growth of an earnest religious life of a Pro- 
testant type. 

A study of religion in Eussia would be incomplete 



458 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



without some reference to Count Tolstoi (Leo Nicolajvitch), 
whose ideas are well known throughout the world. They 
are based on a literal insistence on the words of Christ as 
the law of the Christian life. This involves not only 
non-resistance, but the denial of any government by force, 
and the unlimited application of our Lord's direction 
to give to all who ask for help ; the abolition of war, 
oaths, law courts, prisons and punishment, wealth and 
luxury ; and the practice of universal brotherhood in peace 
and charity. . 



DIVISION IV 

THE SYEIAN AND ARMENIAN CHURCHES 



CHAPTER I 
EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 

(a) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. i. 13 ; Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. iii. 16 ; 
Ephraim the Syrian ; The Homilies of Aphraates (Wright, 
1869) ; The Doctrine of Addai (Cureton's " Ancient Syriac 
Documents," 1864). 

(6) Harnack, Expansion of Christianity^ Book iv. Chap. iii. iii. 5 ; 
Tixeront, Les Origines de V^glise d'iJdesse, 1888 ; Texte u. 
Unters. ix. 1 ; Duval, La Litterature Syriaque (2nd edit., 
1900) ; Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity , 1904, and Intro- 
duction to Evangelion da Mephirreshe, 1904. 

FouK influences have combined to keep the extreme 
Eastern portion of Christendom apart from the main body 
of the Greek Church. These may be described respectively 
as geographical, political, linguistic, and doctrinal. 

Geographically the churches of the Euphrates valley 
and those which were planted farther east were separated 
from the churches to the west of them by the Syrian 
desert, the crossing of which was an expedition, as Zerub- 
babel, Ezra, and Nehemiah had found in ancient times. 

Politically the region in which they were situated 
when not independent was only connected with the Roman 
Empire at intervals, and was more continuously subject to 
Parthian and Persian sovereigns. At the time of the intro- 
duction of Christianity it was governed by its local rulers, 
whose names indicate an Arabian origin. 

No doubt these two factors helped to estabhsh the 

459 



460 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



third. In their isolation the Christians retained their own 
language, which was a branch of the Aramaic that had 
once been prevalent over all the region between the 
Euphrates and the Mediterranean, but which had subse- 
quently given place to G-reek in the parts subject to the 
Eoman Empire. This will account for the difference be- 
tween the Aramaic of the Targums and some parts of the 
Old Testament and the Christian Syriac represented by 
versions of the Bible and those patristic writings that 
arose in Mesopotamia. The Palestinian Aramaic probably 
used by our Lord and His disciples, and in which perhaps 
St. Matthew wrote his Logia — unless he employed the 
classic Hebrew — was very soon superseded in the Church 
by Greek, the lingua franca of all the civiHsed races round 
the Mediterranean. It may have been the dialect of the 
" Gospel according to the Hebrews " and of the Ebionite 
Gospel ; but it was not the language of the churches of 
Antioch and Western Syria. When, therefore, Christianity 
appeared in the distant region of the Euphrates, where a 
slightly different dialect was used, it came in a Greek 
form, and in the first instance its promoters had to provide 
translations of the Gospels and other Christian writings, 
since the people of the land did not understand Greek. 
These translations and the original Christian writings 
which sprang up in the same district in the local dialect 
came to be designated Syriac. In other words, Syriac is 
now the name of the language employed in the Christian 
literature of Eastern Syria, as distinguished from Aramaic, 
which was the slightly different and older language of 
Palestine, afterwards superseded by Greek. A church 
using the Syriac language and producing its own literature 
in that language inevitably tended to a certain individuality. 

But these three influences — the geographical, the 
political, and the linguistic — were far outweighed in im- 
portance by the fourth, the doctrinal. This counted for 
much more than aU the others put together. Deserts can 
be crossed, governments defied, languages translated ; but 
heresy remains separated from orthodoxy by an impassable 



EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 



461 



chasm. The Eastern Syrian Christians were early sus- 
pected of heresy imbibed from Tatian and Barsedanes. 
But the slight irregularities which might have been de- 
tected then were soon overcome. It is later that we see 
the great schisms produced first by Nestorian and then by 
the Monophysite heresies resulting in the establishment of 
the Nestorian and Jacobite Churches, both of them anathe- 
matised by the orthodox Church. 

In the first place, then, we must understand that 
Syrian Christianity — in the early stages of its development 
— is the Christianity of the people speaking Syriac and 
living so far to the east that we scarcely think of their 
home as Syria at all. Meanwhile the Greek-speaking 
Syrians in the west, with their headquarters at Antioch, are 
a different body of Christians, and form an integral portion 
of the Greek Church till they too are cut off, first by 
heresy, and then by Islam. The headquarters of Syrian 
Christianity, and at first apparently its only centre, was 
the city of Edessa, known in the vernacular as Urhai, 
and now represented by Urfa, the capital of the district 
which the Greeks named Osrhoene, situated to the east of 
the Euphrates. While it is uncertain at what time and 
by what means the city was evangehsed, there can be no 
doubt that this was not later than the second half of the 
second century of the Christian era ; possibly the new 
light began to dawn in this far-off Eastern capital even 
before the middle of that century. The legend of Addai 
and King Abgar, which would carry it back to the times of 
Christ's life on earth, is manifestly unhistorical. Eusebius 
repeats it without any question as to its genuineness ; ^ 
and it is contained in a Syriac form in the Doctrine of 
Addai, an apocryphal book of " acts " written at the end 
of the third century or the beginning of the fourth. 
Apart from the absence of earlier testimony and the 
inherent improbability of the story, it is condemned by 
obvious anachronisms.^ 

^ Rist. Eccl. i. 13. 

2 Thus it refers to Eleutheropolis in Palestine, a name that was first 



462 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

Nevertheless, the legend is important both on account 
of its popularity and because it contains hints of actual 
facts, for evidently it comes from earlier times than the 
age of the written records in which it is preserved. 
According to this legend, King Abgar, who is suffering 
from a terrible disease, having heard of the cures our Lord 
is working, sends for Jesus to come and heal him. Jesus, 
while not coming in person, writes him a letter in which 
He promises to send one of His disciples who will cure 
the king's disease. Although we have no ground for 
admitting this letter to be genuine, it has become a historic 
composition because of its wide acceptance and the im- 
mense veneration with which it has been regarded. It 
was found in the year 1900, preceded by the king's letter 
to Jesus, inscribed in Greek characters of about the age of 
Eusebius on a lintel at Ephesus. At the time of the 
Heptarchy our Anglo-Saxon ancestors copied the letter out 
and wore it as a charm " against lightning and hail and perils 
by sea and land, by day and night and in dark places." ^ 
Thus its subsequent history has given it a factitious value 
that makes it worth being quoted in full. The letter is 
addressed to the notary Hanan, who has found Jesus at the 
house of Gamahel, the chief of the Jews. It runs as 
follows : " Go and say to thy Lord that sent thee unto me, 
Happy art thou, that though thou hast not seen me, thou 
hast believed in me ; for it is written of me that they 
which see me will not believe in me, and they which see 
me not, — they will believe in me. Now as to what thou 

attached to the place by Septimius Severus in a.d. 200. Moreover, the 
legend can be accounted for in some measure by the discovery of the actual 
fact that was the germ out of which it grew through the very natural 
confusion of two persons of the same name ; and to account for a legend in 
this way is always the clinching argument that demolishes its claim. Abgar 
IX. , a later king of Edessa, paid a visit to Rome during the bishopric of Zephy- 
rinus (a.d. 202-218), and the name of Zephyrinus is also connected with 
Edessa through Serapion of Antioch. This Abgar may well have sent an 
embassy to Eleutheropolis. His earlier namesake could not possibly have 
done so nearly two centuries before the name of the place existed. 

^ Dom Kuyper's Book of Cerne, p. 205, cited by Burkitt, JSarly Eastern 
Christianity, p. 15, 



EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 



463 



hast written to me, that I should come unto thee, — ^that 
for which I was sent hither hath now come to an end, and 
I go up unto my Father that sent me ; but when I have 
gone up unto Him, I will send thee one of my disciples, 
that whatever disease thou hast he may heal and cure. 
And all that are with thee he shall turn to life eternal, 
and thy town shall be blessed and no enemy shall have 
dominion over it for ever and ever." ^ The reader must 
be struck with the antique tone of this document. In 
particular, the antithetical sentence, " They which see me 
will not believe in me, and they which see me not, — 
they will believe in me," is exactly in the style of the 
Oxyrhynchus Logia} 

Still following the legend, we see Addai, one of the 
" Seventy," despatched by Thomas to Edessa after the 
resurrection of Christ, with the result that the king is 
immediately healed ; whereupon he and a great number of 
his people are converted to Christianity. Addai is said 
to have laboured at Edessa to the end of his life, and to 
have died a natural death. He is succeeded by Aggai, 
who suffers martyrdom under Ma'nu, a heathen son of 
Abgar, his legs being broken while he is sitting at church. 
Aggai having no time to ordain his successor Palut, the 
latter goes to Antioch and there receives ordination from 
Serapion. Here we come out of the mist of legend into 
the light of history. But Serapion did not become bishop 
of Antioch till A.D. 190. Evidently then Palut cannot be 

1 Burkitt, pp. 13, 14. 

2 A seeming proof of great antiquity may be found in the last sentence, 
which promises Abgar that no enemy shall have dominion over his town for 
ever and ever. This sentence, which is contained in the Ephesian inscrip- 
tion as well as in the Doctrine of Addai, is discreetly omitted by Eusebius, 
who thus shows that he is aware of the sack of Edessa by Lucius Quietus, 
under Trajan. And yet, to place it at a more ancient date than that is 
to set back the origin of Christianity too early for all the other evidence. 
Therefore we seem driven to reverse the argument, and to see in this state- 
ment a reason for dating the letter considerably later, when the disaster was 
not in mind. At all events, one thing is certain : it could not have been 
written in the earlier decades of the first century when that horror was in 
the memories of the Syrian Christians. 



464 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



brought so near to one of our Lord's personal disciples as 
the story suggests. But he is important in another way, 
as we shall see later on. Palut represents the advent of 
Antiochene influence over the far-off Syrian Church be- 
yond the desert and the river. Hitherto the Christianity 
of Edessa had been developing independently ; and a very 
interesting course it was then taking. One could have 
wished, for the sake of freedom and variety, that it had 
been let alone altogether, so that we might have witnessed 
the profoundly instrucive spectacle of a Syrian Church, 
having its discipline and doctrine all to itself, working 
out its problems apart from the admixture of Greek 
philosophy and Eoman methods of government which 
came in so early to modify primitive Christianity and 
translate it into the amalgam known as Catholicism. We 
cannot forget that the gospel had its origin in Syria ; 
that it was first taught in Aramaic ; that it began as an 
Oriental, Semitic faith. What should we have seen if it 
had been allowed to develop at least in one spot as 
still an Oriental, Semitic faith, without any admixture of 
Western civilisation ? 

In point of fact no such independent development was 
possible even in very early ages. Before the time of Palut, 
G-reek influences had penetrated to Edessa, for the church 
in this city was in communication with its brethren farther 
west. Tatian's Harmony affords a proof of this statement, 
and at the same time a clear indication of the comparative 
separateness of the most ancient Syrian Christianity. In his 
Address to the Greeks ^ Tatian says that he was " born in the 
land of the Assyrians," but instructed in Greek doctrines and 
afterwards in those that he there undertakes to proclaim. 
Thus, like Justin Martyr, of whom he was a friend and 
disciple, Tatian came to Christianity after studying Greek 
philosophy. His writings cannot be dated later than about 
A.D. 175.^ Now his Address to the Greeks and the titles of 

1 Chap. xlii. 

2 Light foot— A. D. 155-170; Westcott— a.d. 150-175 ; Harnack — the 
Address to the Ch-eeks, a.d. 152-153. 



EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 465 



all his books are in Greek — including that of his Harmony, 
which he calls Diatessaron} There is therefore a certain 
amount of probaljility that he compiled this in Greek, out 
of the original Greek text of the Gospels, and then translated 
it into Syriac. Against this conclusion, however, is the 
fact that its text is of the same type as that of the oldest 
separate Syriac versions of the Gospels,^ w^hich of course 
could not have been dependent on the Harmony. There 
is then also some probability that this w^as made from a 
previously existing Syriac version of the Gospels. But that 
supposition is confronted with a serious difficulty. No such 
version was known at Edessa, the one centre of the Syriac- 
speaking Christians, for it seems certain that Tatian's 
Harmony was the only form in which the Gospels were 
first read in the Church. Previously the Syrian Christians 
had been satisfied with preaching and oral traditions 
about Christ. It was Tatian who introduced the written 
gospel record to Edessa, and he did this in the form of 
a harmony of all four Gospels, as a method which com- 
mended itself to his own private judgment. Here was a 
convenient way of presenting the whole gospel story at 
once instead of confusing people by offering them four 
parallel and more or less divergent narratives. Tatian's 
influence at Edessa must have been considerable ; for he 
succeeded in getting his book read in the church at that 
city. Thus, while the other churches were using the 
four Gospels in their services, the Edessene Church was 
using Tatian's Harmony. Here was a curious distinction 
bearing witness to the aloofness of the Christians of Meso- 
potamia. 

After Justin suffered martyrdom at Eome, it would 
appear that Tatian became his successor as a teacher 
of Christianity in the imperial city. If so, it is probable 
that his unorthodox views had not yet been developed, or 

^ LiaTeaaapoov, i.e. " Harmony" — with an allusion to the four principal 
notes of music, not, as was formerly supposed, to the four Gospels out of 
which it is consti'ucted. Cf. the word " Diapason." 

2 The Curetonian and the Sinaitic. 

30 



466 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



at all events not detected.^ But in the year 172 he was 
excommunicated. Then he went to live in Syria, not far 
from Antioch, and later perhaps at his old home Edessa, 
where he is said to have died. All we know of his 
" heresy " is associated with the Eoman period of his life. 
The omission of the genealogies of Jesus from his Harmony 
is an indication that his divergence from accepted doctrines 
had at least begun when he compiled that work. Accord- 
ing to Irenseus,^ he was a leader of the Encratites, or 
" Abstainers," people who repudiated marriage, meat, and 
wine. Trenseus also associated him with the Gnostics as 
inventing a doctrine of invisible aeons, like the followers of 
Valentinus, while in his asceticism he resembled Marcion. 
Origen attributes to him a doctrine of the demiurge, 
saying that he understood the words " Let there be Hght " 
as a prayer of the creating god of this world to the 
supreme God. These statements are not supported by 
evidence, and they are not confirmed by Tatian's extant 
writings. His omission of the genealogies from the 
Diatessaron may indicate his agreement with Marcion's 
Docetism, but that is all ; we have no trace here or else- 
where in his extant writings of any nearer approach to 
Valentinian Gnosticism. It may well be that, leaving 
Eome under a cloud, Tatian carried with him to the East 
some notions that were unpopular with the ecclesiastical 
authorities in the West. But when he found himself 
again among his simple - minded fellow - countrymen in 
distant Edessa, he was not suspected of heresy, or his 
Harmony would not have been acceptable there; nor 
is there any reason to suppose that he spread very 
peculiar ideas or founded a school of heterodox teach- 
ing. Certainly these Syrian Christians did not become 
Encratites. 

A little later the Church at Edessa obtained a notable 
convert in the person of Bardaisan, who was born in the year 

^ Irenaeus states that he did not express any of his objectionable yiews 
till after Justin's martyrdom, Adv. Hcer. i. 28. 
2 lUd. 



EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 467 

154 and died in 222.^ He was a man of scientific culture, 
but his mixture of astrological notions led to his expulsion 
from the Church, and he has come to be reckoned as one 
of the leaders of Syrian Gnosticism. Unlike Tatian, he 
was not ascetic. He did not join the Encratites ; neither 
did he agree with Marcion in rejecting the Old Testament, 
or assigning the creation of the cosmos to a demiurge, a 
secondary god. According to the reports of his teaching, 
for which we are dependent on his opponents, his chief 
characteristic is the immense importance he attached to 
the power of evil, which he attributed in the first instance 
to Satan and then to the inherent malignity of matter, the 
origin of which he ascribed to Satan. Thus in the act of 
creation God formed the world out of pre-existent matter. 
It might be "the best of all possible worlds," but in a 
more limited sense than that in which Leibnitz used the 
phrase. The architect of the cosmos could only make 
the best of very objectionable material. In this way we 
are to account for the imperfections of nature and the 
evils of society. Here we have a combination of Persian 
and Greek conceptions. The important role assigned to a 
spiritual principle of evil is Zoroastrian ; but the notion of 
a pre-existent matter out of which the Divine architect 
shapes the cosmos is Platonic. Now all this is more than 
doubtful. It has been gathered together from assertions 
and hints in Ephraim the Syrian and Western writers, 
some of which are but conjecturally connected with 
"Bardaisan. So many of the Fathers accuse him of Gnos- 
ticism that it is probable there is some ground for their 
statements. Yet it seems as though his departures from 
conventional ideas have been greatly magnified. No trace 
of the Valentinian aeons can be found even in his enemies' 
accounts of his tenets. We only possess one book which 
represents his views from his own side, and this contains 
nothing seriously unorthodox. It is the work commonly 

^ According to the account of him in Michael the Syrian, who lived as 
late as the end of the twelfth century, but who seems to have had ancient 
authorities to work upon. See Chabot, Michel le Syrien. 



468 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



known as the dialogue " On Fate," but the actual title of 
which is The Book of the Laws of Countries. Dr. Cureton 
found and published a Syriac copy of it. The book pur- 
ports to be written by a disciple of Bardaisan, but Mr. 
Burkitt considers this to be a literary device, and holds 
that Bardaisan himself was its author. Be that as it 
may, this book is our one ancient friendly account of 
the teaching of Bardaisan. The dialogue is a defence 
of free will against the astrological notion of a fate de- 
termined by the stars. It would seem to allow the 
influence of the stars in controlling physical phenomena. 
This notion is supported by a far-away perception of our 
modern scientific truth of the unity of nature and the 
interaction of all its parts. On the other hand, the 
argument goes to show that in the mind man possesses 
freedom ; that his will is free ; and that consequently 
his actions cannot be predicted by a study of the stars. 
Under the same stars different men act differently. This 
defence of free will is emphatically anti-Gnostic ; Gnos- 
ticism, especially Valentinian Gnosticism, being rigorously 
necessarian. 

Tatian and Bardaisan were the two men of brains in 
the early Syrian Church. It is unfortunate for the history 
of that Church that they both lie under suspicions of 
heresy, the one having been condemned in the West, the 
other in his own country. Had there been vigour of in- 
tellect enough at Edessa to have won over Bardaisan to 
the views of his fellow- Christians, or charity enough to have 
found room for him in spite of his peculiarities, he would 
have been a brilliant light in the Church. He was the 
one Syrian who made a serious attempt to lift 

"The burden of the mystery, 
. . . the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelUgible world." 

But the mediaeval chronicler from whom we learn the chief 
facts of his career concludes with the anathema, " May his 
name be accursed." 



EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 



469 



After a period of persecution, during which they were 
cut off from contact with their brethren on the western side 
of the desert, the Syrian Christians of Edessa came for a time 
under the influence of the Greek Church at Antioch. This 
was- owing to the Eoman reconquest of their country and 
temporary absorption of it into the empire in the year 210. 
On the restoration of communication with Antioch which 
followed, Serapion, then the bishop of that city, feeling some 
concern for the isolation of the Syrians and some fear lest 
they should drift away from the main current of Catholic 
life, its customs and its beliefs, ordained them a bishop in 
full sympathy with the Greek Church of Antioch, in the 
person of Palut — previously mentioned in connection with 
the early legends — who proceeded to Edessa and took up 
the succession of the episcopate, which seems to have been 
interrupted by the persecution. His followers were called 
" Palutians," a significant fact which indicated a division 
in the Church, and points to the fact that this interference 
on the part of Antioch was not at first welcomed by the 
Syrians. But while the followers of Bardaisan necessarily 
stood aloof, as did the Marcionites who were also to be found 
in Mesopotamia now or later, the main body of the Church 
was soon reconciled. The Palutians, who represented the 
orthodox Greek Church at Edessa, came to be fused with 
the rest of the Church, and thus the connection with 
Antioch generally recognised. 

There is no evidence that Serapion had any fault to 
find with the doctrine taught in this church. He disliked 
the use of Tatian's Harmony in the public worship, not 
however because he held it to be a heretical perversion of 
the Gospels, nor because it came from the hand of a heretic, 
but simply because it was a compilation, and not the 
Gospels in their original form as these were used in other 
churches. Hitherto this was all the people of Edessa 
knew of the New Testament. They had the Old Testa- 
ment in Syriac, probably the version of the Old Testament 
now contained in the Peshitta, which seems to have been 
a Jewish translation made prior to the founding of a 



470 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Christian Church in Mesopotamia; and they had the 
Diatessaron. That was their Bible. But now Palut 
brought them a New Testament consisting of the four 
Gospels, Acts, and the fourteen epistles ascribed to St. 
Paul, together with a revised edition of the Old Testament. 
Paint's Syrian Gospels — possibly his own translation, as 
Mr. Burkitt supposes — appear to be those known to us in 
the Curetonian and Siniatic manuscripts. They received 
the title of Evangelion da Mepharreshe} 

You cannot make a horse drink by taking him to the 
water, nor can you make a church adopt a new version of 
Scripture by introducing it to that version, as we have seen 
in the case of our Eevised Version. The Diatessaron was 
the old Church lesson book of the Syrians ; it contained 
the gospel story on which they had been brought up from 
their childhood. Palut was quite unable to induce them 
to give it up in favour of the four Gospels that he had 
brought them. It continued to be used in Edessa and the 
other churches of Eastern Syria for more than two 
centuries after this. Indeed, its popularity grew, and it 
penetrated farther north as Christianity slowly spread in 
that direction. 

Palut was succeeded by 'Abshelama, and he by 
Barsamya, who suffered martyrdom under Decius or Valerian 
(a.d. 250-260). Edessa also suff'ered from the persecu- 
tions under Diocletian and Licinius, when there were 
at least three martyrs, Shamona, Guria, and Habbib, whose 
story has been preserved. Then came peace, and for 
a time there is little to record in the obscure history of 
the Syrian Church. Three Syriac compositions in par- 
ticular assigned to the fourth century call for some notice. 
These are the Doctrine of Addai, the Homilies of Aphraates, 
and the Writings of St. Ephraim; but the last-named 

^ i.e. "The gospel of the separate ones." See Burkitt, JEvangelion da 
Mepharreshe. This is much nearer to the Diatessaron than to the later 
Peshitta, and yet it differs in some respects from the former work, which 
bears traces of Tatian's Roman residence, in its more or less Western text, 
agreeing with Codex Bezse and the old Latin version. 



EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 



471 



works are the only Syrian patristic writings that have 
taken a prominent place in ecclesiastical literature. The 
Doctrine of Addai contains the legend of Abgar, the 
missionary work of Addai, that is to say, the apostle 
Thaddseus, and the labours of his disciple and successor, 
the martyr Aggai. Although it is manifestly apocryphal 
and unreliable, it contains much ancient material ; but this 
has been worked over so that in its present form the book 
cannot be ascribed to an earlier date than the fourth 
century. Its theology is post-Mcene. The Homilies of 
Aphraates are twenty-two in number, ten of which are 
asssigned to the year 337, and twelve to the year 344. 
A separate homily. On the Cluster, is assigned to the year 
following. Aphraates, or Afrahat, was a monk and a 
bishop said by tradition to be the head of the convent of 
St. Matthew near Mosul. The Homihes constitute one 
work which is a systematic exposition of the Christian 
faith, arranged as an acrostic, each homily beginning with 
one of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet in order. 
The work, however, does not consist of speculative theology ; 
it deals chiefly with the relation of faith , to the Christian 
life and to moral conduct, especially emphasising the in- 
dwelling of the Spirit of Christ in men, who thus become 
temples of God. 

The Holy Spirit is referred to in the feminine gender, as 
in the Gospel according to the Helrews, and probably for the 
same reason ; while the Greek word for Spirit is neuter,^ the 
Syriac is feminine.^ But innocent as was the cause of it, 
this custom easily lends itself to the Gnostic idea of couples. 
Aphraates holds firmly to the Divinity of Christ ; but he 
defends it in a way that shows how little he is influenced 
by contemporary discussions among the Greek theologians. 
Following the remarkable argument of Christ in the Fourth 
(xospel,^ he supports the doctrine by appealing to in- 
stances of the name of Divinity being given to men. He 
also uses the argumentum ad hominem, urging that it 



1 Tvevfia. 



3 John X. 33-36. 



472 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



is better to worship Jesus than to worship kings and 
emperors. He adds that Christ has called us sons, making 
us His brothers. This is altogether aside from the 
Homoousian doctrine ; it indicates a free handling of the 
problem untrammelled by the phrases of fixed creeds or 
the pronouncements of authoritative counsels. And yet, as 
Mr. Burkitt points out, " on the one hand, he was wholly 
penetrated by the Monotheism of the Catholic religion ; 
on the other, his loyalty and devotion to his Lord assured 
him that no title or homage was too exalted for Christians 
to give to Jesus Christ, through whom they had union 
with the Divine nature."^ Nevertheless there is one 
point at which Aphraates is not only freer and therefore 
fresher than the standard orthodoxy of the Greeks, but 
glaringly at variance with Catholic usage and doctrine. 
This is in his treatment of marriage in relation to baptism. 
He will only allow celibates to be baptised. He does 
not regard marriage as a sacrament, nor does it appear 
that he permits any religious sanction for it. Thus with 
Aphraates, only virgins, widows, and widowers, or husbands 
and wives who have separated from one another, may be 
admitted to the full privilege of the Church, since only 
the baptised are allowed to come to the communion. 
Married people then must remain in the outer court of 
the catechumens, as mere " adherents." He has two 
grades of Christians ; but only the upper grade is really 
in the Church. This is just like the position taken up by 
the Marcionites, and later that of the Manichseans. Mr. 
Burkitt even puts forth the startling theory that at this 
time it was held by the Church of Edessa as a whole. 
But we know too httle about that church to take its 
silence as an evidence of its agreement with Aphraates. 
On the other hand, the silence of Antioch on the subject 
affords a powerful argument against the hypothesis. Surely 
the Edessene Christians would have been denounced in no 

^ Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, to which book, and also its author's 
Evav/j^lUm da Mepharreshe, this sketeh of earlier Syrian literature is largely 
indebted. 



EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY. 473 



measured terms by the orthodox Greeks if they had agreed 
with the Marcionites in this matter. 

The last and by far the best known of these Syrian 
writers is St. Ephraim, commonly called " Ephraim the 
Syrian." He was a child of Christian parents/ born about 
the year 308 in Mesopotamia, probably at Nisibis. He 
died at Edessa in the year 373. All sorts of marvels are 
attributed to him in his youth, and he is credited by his bio- 
grapher with singular precocity. There is no doubt that he 
was drawn by the fame of St. Basil to visit that great man 
at Caesarea, by whom he was powerfully influenced. The 
rumour of an invasion of heresy at Edessa sent him back 
to his native land, where he became a champion of the 
orthodox faith, but living as an anchorite in his cell. 
Ephraim's name has obtained prominence in Church history 
somewhat disproportionate to his ability and achievements. 
Perhaps this is partly due to the fact that his works have 
been preserved and that they bulk largely in theological 
libraries. Still, as a commentator he shows real wisdom, 
coming between the literalism of Antioch and the allegorising 
of Alexandria, in endeavouring to bring out the true 
spiritual significance of Scripture. But he was more 
popular in his own day as a hymn- writer — why, it is difficult 
to say, since his hymns are obscure, allusive, prolix, and 
dreary. He threw his doctrinal teaching into the form of 
verse, and taught choirs to chant orthodoxy, as Arius had 
taught his followers to chant heresy. His Carmina Nisilena 
have a more mundane character, for they treat of the 
struggle between Sapor and the Eomans for the possession of 
Nisibis. The work of Ephraim best known in subsequent 
times is his Sermo de Domino, a treatise on the Incarnation, 
in which he teaches that the taking of manhood into God 
was in order that men might receive the Divine nature. 
Thus he accepts the thoroughly Greek notion of salvation 

^ This is what he says himself, and it must be accepted in opposition to 
the assertion of his Acta, that his father was a priest at a heathen idol 
temple. See 0pp. Syr. ii. 499, cited in Smith's Diet, of Chr. Biog. vol. ii. 
p. 137a. 



474 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



by the Incarnation. At the same time he agrees with 
the mystical idea of salvation resulting from union with 
Christ as consisting in the redeemed man becoming a 
dwelling-place for God. He holds a peculiar doctrine of 
the Charismata, according to which the privileges of Israel 
are gathered up in Christ and then distributed by Him, 
so that the ancient grace of the priesthood is thus trans- 
mitted to the Christian Church. 

A curious Syrian work of an entirely different character 
written about this time is the Acts of Judas Thomas} 
which tells how the apostle went to India and built a 
palace for the king in heaven. This is a popular religious 
story, which Dr. Eendel Harris has shown to be blended 
with the classic myth of the Dioscuri. The strange notion 
underlying this story is that J udas, " not Iscariot," but 
the other apostle Judas, who is named " Thomas," a word 
which means "twin,"^ was the twin-brother of Jesus.^ 
The book has been regarded as heretical ; and it agrees with 
Aphraates in requiring celibacy in the baptised. Evidently, 
then, there was a strong tendency in that direction at 
Edessa, although it cannot be proved that this entirely 
dominated the Church in that city even during its free 
and independent age. The novel contains some mystical 
elements in the prayers attributed to St. Thomas, indicating 
that like Aphraates its author was not fettered by the 
phraseology of Catholic orthodoxy, simply because he was 
a member of a church that was developing on its 
own lines without interference from the main body of 
Christendom. 

With the Acts of Thomas is associated a Syrian 
Christian poem known as the Hymn of the Soul, originally 
a separate composition but now incorporated in the story. 
It is not really a hymn at all, but an allegory in verse 
telling of the adventures of the soul which has come from 

1 Wright's Apocryphal Acts, pp. 159-165. 

2 Gw/aSs = DiN^. So we read three times in the Fourth Gospel, 0w/*as 
6 \eybfievo$ Aidvfios, John xi. 16, xx. 24, xxi. 2. 

^ See Kendel Harris, The Dioscuri in the Christian Legends, 



EARLY SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY 



475 



its heavenly home to earth and is performing tasks assigned 
to it as the way for its return. This idea is worked out 
in the form of the pilgrimage of a prince to Egypt in quest 
of the serpent-guarded pearl. 

Thus far, then, we have seen the Syrian Church at 
Edessa going its own way and working out its own ideas 
of Christian truth and life, no doubt with the " mediocrity " 
of ability which, as Eenan says, characterises everything 
Syriac, and certainly without producing any really great 
men, but still with a certain freedom, originality, and variety 
that interest us in contrast with the growing uniformity 
of Catholic standards in the main body of the Church. 
Early in the fourth century this isolation was disturbed, 
and for the second time the Eastern Syrian Church was 
brought more into line with the orthodox Greek Church 
at Antioch. This was the work of the great ecclesiastic 
Kabbulas, a native of Chalcis (Quinnesrin, i.e., "Eagle's 
Nest ") in Syria, who had a heathen priest for his father 
but a Christian mother. Having come to personal 
decision for his mother's religion, he went to Jerusalem 
and then down to the Jordan to be baptised. On his 
return he renounced his wife and his property, sent his 
children to convent schools, and went first to the monastery 
of St. Abraham at Chalcis, and, since that was not severe 
enough for him, afterwards to a cave in the desert, where 
he lived the life of a hermit. Thus he won fame in the 
Church, and in the year 411 he had his reward. He was 
then appointed bishop of Edessa by a synod at Antioch. 
Eabbulas proved to be an energetic disciplinarian, especially 
aiming at correcting the irregularities, that is to say, the 
national or local peculiarities, of his diocese, by bringing his 
flock into line with the Greek-speaking Church. With 
this end in view he made a dead set against the Diatessaron, 
ordering it to be removed from all the churches, and 
commanding the four separate Gospels to be substituted for 
it. But he did not circulate the old Syriac gospels of 
Palut ; his gospels were in a text more nearly agreeing 
with the Syrian Greek text used at Antioch in his day. 



476 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



This was the text of the Peshitta, which does not appear 
in earlier Syrian writings, but which henceforth becomes 
the text of Syrian Christian literature. It is reasonable, 
therefore, to infer that it was Eabbulas who introduced 
the Peshitta New Testament, which was to be used 
as the recognised version of the Church, as the Syrian 
" Vulgate." 



CHAPTER II 



THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 

Zachariah of Mitylene, Chronicle (Eng. trans, in " Byzantine Texts," 
1899) ; Asseman, Biblioth. Oriental, tome iv. ; Gibbon, Decline 
and Fall, chap, xlvii. ; Badger, Nestorians and their Ritual, 1862 ; 
The Booh of Governors ; The Historia Monastica of Thomas, bishop 
of Marga, a.d. 840, edited from Syrian manuscripts, etc., by 
G. Wallis Budge, 1893 ; Etheridge, Syrian Churches, 1846 ; 
Noldeke Geschichte der Per sen. 

The rise and progress of the Nestorians offers us one of 
the greatest surprises in history. By condemning them as 
heretics the council of Ephesus (a.d. 431) unwittingly gave 
them their opportunity. Church councils have succeeded 
in crushing movements which had not obtained much 
popular support. But no decree of a coimcil has ever 
destroyed a powerful heresy. The great days of Arianism 
came after it had been anathematised by the Nicene Council. 
The case of Nestorianism is even more significant. The 
triumph of the Arians was due to imperial patronage ; but 
the Nestorians were not favoured with that encouragement. 
Cast out of the empire, they brought fresh life to the Syrian 
Church beyond its borders, and stimulated an enthusiastic 
missionary movement which rapidly spread eastward Hke a 
prairie fire, covering wide areas of Central Asia. 

Cyril of Alexandria had snatched a victory at Ephesus 
by a stroke of smart tactics ; ^ but he was too astute a 
politician to deceive himself with the supposition that this 
had ended his difficulties. Having secured the condemna- 
tion of Nestorius, he was not unwilling to conciliate the 

^ See p. 96. 
477 



478 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



arch-heretic's friends and supporters, the most important of 
whom was John, the patriarch of Antioch, whom he had 
affronted by hurrying through the council's discussions 
before the arrival of that important personage. But the 
negotiations began on the Nestorian side under the influence 
of an august power to which all parties paid deference. 
The emperor interfered as peacemaker, and at his com- 
mand Paul of Emesa, who had belonged hitherto to the 
Nestorian party, visited Cyril at Alexandria (a.d. 432), 
and explained the Syrian view in such a way as to allow 
of the uniting of the two natures in Christ while each 
retained its individuality pure and unmixed. A compact 
was now made, according to which Cyril assented to this 
statement, while John and his party were to acquiesce in 
the condemnation of Nestorius — the Jonah cast out to end 
the storm. His disciples were called Simonians, his books 
burned, and the heretic himself driven away first to Petra, 
then to the Fayum oasis. 

After this the centre of Nestorianism passes over to 
Edessa. Ibas, a presbyter in that church, and according 
to some accounts the head of the theological school, now 
an important seat of learning, had been present at the 
council of Ephesus as a supporter of Nestorius. Eabbulas, 
his bishop, had also been there, and at first friendly to the 
Nestorian position ; but he had subsequently gone over 
decidedly to the other side. In making this change, 
however, he did not carry his people with him, and Ibas, as 
leader of the Nestorian party at Edessa, had the great 
majority of the church with him. Ibas then wrote a 
letter, of which much was made later, to Maris, then or 
later bishop of Hardaschir in Persia, in w^hich he gave a 
graphic account of the council of Ephesus and also defined 
his position — on the one hand condemning Nestorius for 
approaching the Unitarianism of Paul of Samosata, and on 
the other hand condemning Cyril for ApoUinarianism ; both 
inaccurate charges. Eabbulas died in the year 435 (or 
436), and Ibas was then carried to the bishopric by the 
voice of the popular party which he represented. The 



THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 



479 



case was now serious, for although he had repudiated 
Nestorius, the newly appointed bishop of Edessa was the 
leading living supporter of essential Nestorianism. He 
had translated the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the 
real author of the heresy. Thus that system came to have 
its headquarters at Edessa under the patronage of the chief 
ecclesiastic of the Eastern Syrian Church. Four disaffected 
presbyters now headed a party in opposition, and compelled 
Domnus, who had succeeded his uncle John in the patri- 
archate of Antioch, and was friendly to Ibas, reluctantly 
to summon a synod for hearing the charges against him. 
Some of them were trivial, as that he used inferior wine at 
the Eucharist, but among them was the grave accusation of 
Nestorianism. However, nothing was decided, and the case 
was postponed. The presbyters then resorted to Constanti- 
nople and appealed to the emperor, who ordered a trial by 
an imperial commission of bishops at Tyre — of course quite 
contrary to ecclesiastical rules and rights. These com- 
missioners endeavoured to effect a reconciliation. But 
the peace they secured on the spot did not last. The 
Eutychian party was now rising in power. When Ibas 
returned home he found the minds of his flock poisoned 
with adverse notions. Under orders from Constantinople, 
Chaereas, the civil governor of Osrhoene, arrested him on 
the charges the presbyters had urged against him. Monks 
and nuns of the opposing party joined in the hue and cry, 
eager to hound him to death. He was a " second Judas " ; 
an " enemy of Christ " ; an " offshoot of Pharaoh." " To 
the fire with him and all his race ! '* they cried. Ibas 
was removed by the emperor's soldiers, but as only a 
synod could depose him, this was subsequently done by 
" the robber council " at Ephesus, where he was again de- 
nounced by the fierce monks as a " second Judas " and 
" veritable Satan." Subsequently, at the council of Chal- 
cedon (a.d. 451), under the new emperor, Marcian, he 
was pardoned on condition that he anathematised both 
Nestorius and Eutyches, .and accepted the Tome of Leo. 
Nevertheless he had not changed his views, and his people 



480 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



knew it. To this day he is anathematised as a Nestorian 
by the Jacobites in their profession of faith. 

Meanwhile the Nestorian movement was spreading 
farther north and east. Eabbulas had expelled a scholar 
Barsumas, who was connected with the theological school 
at Edessa, and who then went to Nisibis in Persian territory, 
where he became bishop (a.d. 435). There he established 
a theological school which was essentially Nestorian in 
character. The original Syrian school at the capital was 
never purged of Nestorianism. Thus there were now two 
seats of learning from which the obnoxious tenets were 
disseminated, till the Edessa school was finally suppressed 
by the emperor in the year 489 on account of its heresy. 
Like the Huguenots after the revocation of the edict of 
Nantes, who brought the silk trade to England, like the 
Pilgrim Fathers who carried the best of Puritan energy 
out of England to found a new world, the Nestorians came 
to Mesopotamia with the arts and crafts of life. Carpenters, 
smiths, weavers, the best of the artisan class, they came to 
start industries and lay the foundations of manufacturing 
prosperity in the land of their adoption. Then the expul- 
sion of Nestorians from the great school at Edessa — "the 
Athens of Syria," as Gibbon calls it — led to the propaga- 
tion of their teaching in the remote regions of their travels. 
They did not go merely as exiles. As in the story of 
the Jerusalem Christians driven from their homes by the 
persecution of Herod, their very troubles converted them 
into missionaries. At home they were denounced as heretics ; 
abroad, where no rumours of miserable doctrinal disputes 
were heard, they simply journeyed as enthusiastic mission- 
aries of the gospel. And they were wonderfully successful, 
winning converts in one district after another as they 
penetrated further and yet further into the unknown lands 
of Asia. 

In the first place this influx of Nestorians gave a great 
impulse to Christianity in Persia. Two influences combined 
to make that successful. The mere increase in numbers, 
the infusion of fresh blood, and the zeal and devotion of 



THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 



481 



men who were exiles for their faith, stimulated the churches 
which they found beyond the Euphrates into vigour, and 
led to the planting of new churches. Then, further, 
their advent changed the policy of the Persian government 
towards the Christians. In former times this had been 
adverse, sometimes to the extent of carrying on devastating 
persecutions.^ The Magi had roused opposition to the 
Christians on religious grounds, in the interest of Zoro- 
astrianism, and the kings had been ready to resort to 
violence because they had regarded the Church in Persia as 
an ally of their standing enemy the Eoman Empire. But 
now the case was different. It is true that at first the re- 
newed vigour of Persian Christianity produced by the advent 
of the Nestorians provoked a fresh outbreak of persecution 
under King Firuz or Peroz (a.d. 465). But since it was 
directed against the Cathohcs it went on the old lines of 
oppressing the clients and suspected allies of the orthodox 
Byzantine Church, which was closely associated with the 
Byzantine government. Before long, however, the original 
Christians joined hands with the Nestorians, and the new- 
comers, fusing themselves into the ancient Church, effectually 
leavened it with their doctrine, so that the Persian Church 
became Nestorian. By yielding so completely to the influ- 
ence of the immigrants, the Christians of Persia came under 
the ecclesiastical ban of excommunication which had been 
pronounced by the Cathohc Church at Ephesus and reiterated 
at Chalcedon. They were all heretics out of communion 
with Eome, and also with Constantinople, Antioch, and 
Alexandria. Accordingly they ceased altogether to be in 
any way politically dangerous to Persia as friends and aUies 
of the empire. On the contrary, the Persian government 
and the Nestorian Church saw a common enemy in the 
Byzantine Empire. It was to their interest to draw 
together in mutual self-defence against attacks from the 
dreaded foe. The Magian opposition, which rested on 
other grounds, would not be affected by this change in 
the political kaleidoscope. But a spirit of conciliation 

1 See p. 299. 

3« 



482 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



leading to mutual concessions softened the antagonism here 
also. Perhaps under the influence of Zoroastrianism, 
which recognised only good in nature and considered the 
source of evil to be a spiritual power, the Nestorians 
abandoned the rigour of Catholic asceticism. At a synod 
held in the year 499, presided over by Babaeus, the 
metropolitan of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, they abolished 
all clerical celibacy, even permitting bishops to marry. It 
was reported of them by the orthodox as a great scandal 
that some of them married repeatedly. Second marriages 
were always looked upon with disfavour in the orthodox 
Church ; though permitted to the laity, they were absolutely 
forbidden to the clergy. In the Greek Church the 
bishops were celibate, while the parish popes were required 
to be married, but only once. But now among the 
Nestorians not only were the bishops permitted to marry, 
but if they lost a first wife, to marry again, and thus to 
have a licence in the matter not even permitted to the 
lower clergy in the main body of the Eastern Church. The 
situation was regarded with professional horror among the 
orthodox bishops. The arrangement seems to have worked 
well in the Persian Church, for that Church continued to 
flourish and expand. It was virtually identical with the 
Syrian Church at Edessa, although not always under the same 
civil government. Now we saw that Aphraates advocated 
celibacy as a condition of baptism.^ How far this view 
had been adopted by the main body of the Eastern Syrian 
Christians cannot be determined from the scanty informa- 
tion at our disposal. But at all events it seems clear that 
a great change must have come over that church when 
under Nestorian influences for it to have acquiesced in, and 
apparently adopted, the daring innovation of the complete 
abolition not only of baptismal celibacy, but even of clerical 
celibacy.^ This liberty has since been abolished in the 
Nestorian Church, which has assimilated its custom to 
that of the Greek Church, in requiring its bishops to be 

1 See p. 472. 

2 See Lea, Clericcil Celibacy, vol. i. pp. 98, 99. 



THE SYRIAN NESTOEIANS 



483 



without wives. The precise time when marriage was 
prohibited to the higher clergy has not been ascertained. 
The catholicos Mar Abd Yeshua, writing in the seventh 
century, has a chapter on marriage and virginity, in which 
no restriction is assigned to clerical marriage. A work 
called Bebboreethay by Schl^mon, the metropolitan of Bosra, 
refers to several wives of patriarchs. Another work states 
that the metropolitan of Nisibis about the twelfth century, 
himself a married man, convened a synod which decreed 
that bishops should be allowed to marry.^ This shows that 
there were opponents of episcopal marriage in the Syrian 
Church at that time, although they proved only to be a 
minority who could be thwarted by a synod. 

The Nestorian Church in Eastern Syria and Persia 
was organised under an archbishop usually known as the 
catholicos; and in the year 498 the catholicos assumed 
the title of " Patriarch of the East." He was fully justified 
in wearing this proud title. As a Nestorian heretic he was 
entirely free from the patriarchate of Antioch, which from 
time to time had claimed to exercise jurisdiction over 
Mesopotamia, but which had now cut off and anathematised 
all his Church. On the other hand, the wide and con- 
tinuous extension of Christianity in the Far East as a 
result of the labours of the Nestorian missionaries was 
giving him an immense extent of patriarchal territory, for 
all the converts in the new districts were taught to look 
to the catholicos as their ecclesiastical head. The seat of 
the patriarchate was at the twin-cities of Seleucia and 
Ctesiphon, one of which was on the western and the otlier 
on the eastern bank of the Tigris. These cities together 
formed the centre of trade and travel between Europe and 
Western Asia on one side, and India and China on the 
other. Caravans with Oriental products destined to minister 
to the luxury of more prosperous nations, came back from 
visits to the industrious populations of those mysterious 
distant empires of which as yet Europe knew little, and 
displayed their wares in the bazaars of this great emporium. 
1 Badger, vol. ii. pp. 180, 181. 



484 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

It was a magnificent centre for the missionary Church that 
was now beginning to enter on its great task of carrying 
the gospel to the Far East. 

At first the reinvigorated Syrian Christians repudiated 
the name Nestorian. This was not because they were 
unwilling to accept the doctrines taught by Nestorius, but 
simply because they had no connection with the deposed 
patriarch of Alexandria. They had learnt the scheme of 
Christology with which his name was associated more from 
the writings of Theodore, its real founder and ISTestorius's 
teacher, and from others of the same school. But they 
were not willing to have their position represented even in 
this way. They did not regard themselves as persons won 
over to a new doctrine. . They maintained that the ideas 
now anathematised by the Greek Church were genuine, 
original Christian truths. Accordingly the catholicos 
Ebed-Jesu declared that it might rather be said that 
Nestorius followed them than that they were led by him.^ 

We must not suppose that the Nestorian tide of 
immigration entirely swept away the ascetic ideal, which 
had been so very marked as to be almost Marcionite in 
some quarters, at all events during the earlier days of the 
Church of Edessa. We have a remarkable testimony to 
the contrary in the chronicle of a Nestorian monk now 
available for the English reader. This is the Booh of 
Governors, written by Thomas, bishop of Marga, and dated 
in the year 840, which Dr. Wallis Budge has edited in the 
Syriac, translated into English, and published. Thomas has 
here done for the Syrian monks what Palladius did for the 
Egyptian monks. His work is worthy of a place by the 
side of the Paradise ^ for its first-hand account of ancient 

1 Etheridge, The Syrian Churches, p. 72. Etheridge states that even 
to-day they object to the title " Nestorian." But Badger cites instances of 
the use of it in more modern times. For example, in the year 1609 Mar Abd 
Yeshua drew up " the orthodox creed of the Nestorians," stating that he did 
so "in the blessed city of Khlat in the church of the blessed Nestorians" 
{The Nestorians and their Ritual, vol. i. p. 178). Layard states that the 
name was first given by the Roman Catholic missionaries (Nineveh and its 
Remains, vol. i. p. 259) ; but Badger shows that it had been used earlier. 

2 See p. 153. 



THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 



485 



monasticism. It gives us valuable information about an 
important part of the Nestorian Church at the most obscure 
period of its history. In reading the book we are brought 
right back into the atmosphere of this old Syrian monas- 
ticism, and are able to see the real, human, distinctive figures 
of a large number of its representative men, and to examine 
the manners and customs of their communities with much 
detail.^ 

Syrian monasticism originated in Egyptian monasticism 
— the scene and centre of the earliest ascetic life in the 
Church. It appears to have begun with Awgin, who 
sprang from an Egyptian family residing on an island near 
the spot where Suez now stands, and who was originally a 
pearl fisher. This man became a disciple of Pachomius. 
He subsequently settled at Nisibis, and there gathered 
about him a number of ascetics. The date of his death is 

^ The first question that rises on the perusal of such a book — so new to 
most English-speaking students of Church history — is that of its genuineness 
and freedom from interpolations. It abounds in miracles ; but that was 
only to be expected. No monkish chronicle of the ninth century could 
have been free from miracle, and any non-miraculous chronicle of this 
period would be ipso facto spurious. It is somewhat disconcerting, however 
to find that the four MSS. out of which Dr. Budge has constructed his 
text are all modern. These MSS. are (a) British Museum, Oriental, 2,316, 
probably written in the early part of the seventeenth century ; (& and c) 
MS. in Dr. Budge's possession, both written in 1888 ; {d) Vat., in the 
Vatican library, No. clxv., written a.d. 1663. We see then that of the 
four MSS. on which Dr. Budge relies, the two oldest were written in 
the seventeenth century, and the other two in the year 1888. Dr. Budge 
does not indicate in any way the sources of the latter, though surely it 
should be possible to discover what these were. In addition, he mentions 
three other MSS., now in Europe, which he does not date and which 
apparently he has not collated. Dr. Budge is satisfied that the text has 
not been tampered with, because his four MSS. agree — except for ordinary 
various readings. But that fact is no proof that they might not all be 
derived from a common source which was not sound. A better ground 
of assurance in the substantial genuineness of the documents is their 
internal characteristics. (1) The narrative fits into the circumstances of the 
times. (2) The writer does not hesitate to record what is discreditable to 
his monks — a point in favour of an early date. A later Syrian writer would 
be likely to suppress discreditable incidents. On the whole, therefore, 
probably we may accept this book as Thomas's genuine record. If anybody 
would take the trouble to apply the principles of the Higher Criticism 
to it, he might lead us to a more conclusive verdict. 



486 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



given as a.d. 363. The one monastery founded by Awgin 
is credited with having sent out no less than seventy-two 
missionaries. We may regard him as the St. Columba 
of Syrian monasticism. 

Two other monasteries are known to have been 
instituted in Mesopotamia before the end of the fourth 
century. Therefore by the time of Thomas this Eastern 
Syrian monasticism was ah-eady more than four hundred 
years old. Meanwhile it had been absorbed in the great 
Nestorian movement that had taken over the Church in 
Mesopotamia. So Thomas was a Nestorian and the 
monks about whom he wrote were Nestorians, although it 
would be difficult to discover the fact from his book, which 
is far removed from theological controversies. 

Thomas tells us that he came to the monastery of B^th 
'Abhe when a young man, in the year a.d. 832 ; and his 
book is concerned with the monks and chiefly the governors 
of this monastery. It has since disappeared and the exact 
site of it has not been recovered, though it is known to 
have been situated somewhere among the mountains not 
far from the Upper or Great Zab, on its right bank, in a 
bleak region where fruit trees could not be cultivated. 
According to Thomas, the monastery was founded by 
Eabban Jacob, originally a monk of Mount Izla (a.d, 595 
or 596); but inasmuch as this man found some monks 
there, we must conclude that it was a more ancient centre 
for a group of ascetics' huts or caves. Under Jacob and 
his successors it grew into a very important monastery. 
It would seem that its inmates were men of high social 
position, and that they cultivated learning as well as 
asceticism. Many of them belonged to noble Persian and 
Arab families. The library contained a large collection of 
books, among which was Thomas's favourite work, the 
Paradise of Palladius, translated in the seventh century 
by Anan Isho, a monk of the great monastery of Izla, near 
Nisibis, who had made a pilgrimage to the Scetic desert, 
the home of ancient asceticism. The daily services were 
seven in number — just before sunset, at dusk, at midnight, 



THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 



487 



at daybreak, and through the day ; and at these services 
lessons from the Old and New Testaments were read, 
collects said, and hymns, anthems, and responses sung. 
This was the general custom in Nestorian monasteries, 
which followed in the main the usual monastic routine 
observed in other branches of the Eastern Church. There 
was no set and recognised scheme of music. Each 
monastery or church had its own tunes. The monastery 
was supported partly by endowments and partly by the 
labour of its monks. Soon after the time of Thomas 
it began to decline, owing to oppressive Mohammedan 
taxation and also through the violent aggression of the 
Arabs, who seized neighbouring land and villages. Thomas 
obtained his information through being secretary to Mar 
Abraham, the governor of the monastery in his day. 
Subsequently he became bishop of Marga — from which 
fact he comes to be known as " Thomas of Marga " ; and 
later still he was honoured with the title of " Metropolitan 
of Beth Garmai." 

After his apology and introduction, Thpmas begins his 
narrative with an account of the monastery of Mount 
Izla and the unfortunate happenings there which led to 
Jacob's removal to B^th 'Abhe. This story is important 
both on its own account and for the light it throws 
on the circumstances of the times. The monks were 
allowed to live in scattered cells and more or less widely 
separated villages, although under the common rule of 
the governor. Even then the lack of communication is 
remarkable. It was found that the monks in one of these 
outlying villages were married. According to one account, 
a visitor saw the children playing about in the street. The 
domestic life was carried on without fear or reproach, and 
this comfortable arrangement continued for a number of 
years without any attempt at stopping it. At length the 
scandal was discovered by a monk named Elijah, a fierce, 
uncompromising ascetic, who determined to have what he 
described as " the gangrene " cut away. So the story 
stands in Thomas's book. But it is scarcely possible to 



488 THE GREEK AND EASTERN OHURCHES 



believe that the village had been so completely hidden 
that no rumour of its doings had got abroad. The 
reasonable explanation is that this was known and was 
connived at by the governor all along. 

That such a condition of things could have been going 
on quite openly, unmolested and unrebuked for years, in 
connection with a monastery, must strike the reader who 
has only been accustomed to monasticism in the Eoman 
Catholic and orthodox Churches as simply amazing. It 
was not so remarkable in Mesopotamia, for it was quite 
in line with the Nestorian disregard of asceticism which 
allowed the marriage of bishops. But now comes this 
stern censor denouncing the married monks with the spirit 
of a Hildebrand, or like a Nehemiah commanding the 
Israelites to send away their foreign wives. He ex- 
postulates with the governor for not having stopped the 
scandal, " while in this Divine inheritance Sodom is being 
raised to life again, and Geba rebuilt."^ The upshot is 
that the offending monks with their wives and children 
were expelled and their huts burned. But this was not 
all. Not so far away there lived the holy Eabban Mar 
Jacob, whom Thomas characterises as " the most meek and 
humble of all men, who knew not that any sin besides his 
own existed in creation, whose eye was pure, and who 
never perceived wickedness in his neighbour." ^ Was 
there ever a more lovely description of a Christian soul 
than this account of the seventh century Nestorian monk 
among the mountains of Eastern Syria ? He was as 
different as possible from the fierce Elijah, and that 
self-elected reformer charged Jacob with conniving at 
the abomination. Although the good man had known 
nothing of it, according to Thomas, or had never suspected 
harm in it, as we may more probably conclude, he was 
driven from the monastery almost broken-hearted. After 
wandering about for a time Jacob came to Beth 'Abhe. 
But this expulsion of a perfectly innocent man was not to 
be taken lightly. The monks made a great commotion at 
^ Book of Governors^ Book i. chap. x. * Ibid. chap. xii. 



THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 



489 



the injustice of it, and many of them left in indignation 
to become the founders of various other monasteries at 
Nineveh, Erzerum, and the country lying between the 
upper and lower Zab rivers, till, as Thomas says, " they 
filled the country of the East with monasteries, and 
convents, and habitations of monks, and Satan who had 
rejoiced at their discomfiture was put to shame." ^ 

The second abbot of Beth 'Abhe was J ohn, an author of 
some repute, who left a chronicle, rules for novices, maxims, 
etc. He was succeeded by Paul, who lived through a good 
part of the troublous times of King Khusrau's wars with the 
Greeks and witnessed a persecution of the Christians. In 
the year 647 Isho-yahbh became catholicos, and he greatly 
enriched the monastery, building a splendid church and 
adding other accessories. A second Hyppolytus, he was 
the author of a " Eefutation of Heretical Opinions." Some 
of the monks were rigid ascetics in spite of the laxity of 
Nestorianism. Thomas tells us that Cyriacus the eighteenth 
abbot used to stand all night with one knee " bent like a 
camel," and fastened with a leather strap. It is more 
edifying to learn how earnestly the necessity of labour was 
insisted on. Thus in Canon i. of Mar Abraham we read, 
" Quietness then is preserved by these two causes, namely, 
constant reading and prayer, or by the labour of the hands 
and meditation " ; and he adds, " Let us flee from idleness, 
which is a thing that causeth loss, being firmly persuaded 
that, if we allow it to remain it will be impossible for us 
either to bear leaves or to yield fruit, if indeed it happen 
not that we be altogether cut off from the life of the fear 
of God." 2 

Thomas narrates how the catholicos Isho - yahbh, 
accompanied by some of his bishops, was sent by the 
Persian King Sheroe ^ to endeavour to bring about peace 

^ Ihid. chap, xiv, ^ Hid. vol. i. Introd. p. cxxv. 

2 Thomas calls him " the good King Sheroe." In point of fact, although 
overtures of peace had been made to Heraclius by Sheroe, it was the Queen 
Boran, daughter of Khusrau Parwey who despatched the embassy. See 
Budge, The Book of Governors, vol. ii. p. 125, note 2. 



490 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

with the Byzantine Greeks. In connection with this 
embassy he tells a story which reflects as little credit on his 
own sense of honesty as on that of the head of his Church. 
While " these holy men," passing through the city of 
Antioch, were resting in one of the churches, the catholicos 
observed a white casket marked with the sign of the cross, 
which contained bones and portions of the bodies of the 
blessed apostles. Observing what mighty deeds were 
wrought by these relics, Isho-yahbh prayed earnestly that 
he might have the treasure to take to his own country. 
Having vexed and tortured himself with all manner of 
schemes to get hold of it and not being able to succeed, 
notwithstanding his Oriental subtlety, he put the matter in 
the hands of God to protect him while he did his best to 
secure the coveted casket. Then he stole it and carried 
it back with him to Persia. Thomas does not express the 
least disapproval of this transaction. On the contrary, 
he tells his story with gusto, evidently ascribing it to the 
honour of the catholicos that his trust in God enabled him 
to accomplish the theft. 

The monastery of Beth 'Abh^ was subsequently dis- 
turbed by the Euchites. The branch of these people, the 
" praying monks," in Syria, there called Messalians, cherished 
a severe doctrine of original sin together with little faith in 
the efficacy of sacraments. Everybody was born with a demon 
united to his soul, which prompted him to evil and which 
was not exorcised by baptism, that rite only clipping off the 
offence of actual transgressions " as with shears while the 
root of the evil still remained behind." ^ The remedy was 
prayer, constant, uninterrupted prayer. The consequence 
was that the Euchites abandoned labour, ceased to work 
for their bread like other monks, lived by begging, lay 
about in the streets, and spent much of their time in 
sleep. Women mixed with men in the wandering companies 
of the Euchites, and charges of immorality amounting to 
promiscuous intercourse were brought against them on that 
account, but apparently on no other evidence.^ Neander 
* Timotheus, De reeejpt. hcer, i. 2. * See Epiphanius, Hcer. 80. 



THE SYRIAN NESTORIANS 



491 



calls them " the first mendicant Friars." ^ They are said to 
have believed that prayer drove out the demons as spittle, 
mucus from the nose, or in the form of a serpent or a sow 
with a litter of pigs. But probably these absurdities resulted 
from taking their metaphors literally. A more dangerous 
and not improbable error was the perfectionism to which 
they inclined. And yet, like Wesley's doctrine of Christian 
perfection, this may have been a stimulating ideal rather 
than a vain boast. The first leader of the party was a 
layman of Mesopotamia named Adelphius. Flavian, the 
patriarch of Antioch, induced him when an old man to 
make a confidant of an aged bishop who was really a spy. 
The Euchite doctrine being thus meanly extracted, Adelphius 
and his followers were beaten, excommunicated, and banished. 
From Syria they went to Pamphylia. Condemned over and 
over again by various local synods, they persisted, and 
flourished in spite of scorn and hatred. The council of 
Ephesus confirmed the synod's condemnation of the party, 
and anathematised a Messalian book called Asceticus. 
Subsequently the Euchites had a leader named Lampetus, 
after whom they were sometimes called Lampetians ; later 
still they were called Marcianists, after a leader of the party 
in the sixth century named Marcian. They Hngered on 
till they mingled with the Bogomiles.^ In the fourteenth 
century there was a revival of Euchite ideas and practices 
among the monks of Mount Athos. 

If the charge of immorality — so com m on in the case of 
heretics and so generally baseless — was a cruel libel, the 
only serious objection to these Euchites in the eyes of the 
modern world would be their idleness. But their slighting 
the sacraments, to which is to be added the fact that they 
objected to the choral services of the Church, would be 
quite enough to account for their condemnation by their 
contemporaries. We may regard them, however, as simple 
pietists, in some way allied to Puritanism, in some respects 
anticipating Quaker views, in some degree approaching the 
modern devotees of what has been called " the higher life." 

^ CTiiLrcli Hist. vol. iii. section iv. i. 2 ggg 225. 



492 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

Somewhat similar to the Euchites were the Eustathians, 
followers of Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste in Armenia, 
who broke up homes, and induced husbands, wives, children, 
and servants to go off with the wandering bands. They 
would partake of no sacrament administered by a married 
priest. For the same reason they would not meet for 
worship in the house of a married man. 



CHAPTER III 



THE LATER NESTORIANS, THE CHALDEANS, AND 
THE JACOBITES 

(a) Thomas of Marga, Historia Monastica (edited by Budge, 1893) ; 

John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History (trans, by Payne 

Smith) ; Zachariah, Syriac Chronicle, Eng. trans., 1899 ; 

Asseman, Bihlioth. Oriental, tomes ii. and iv. 
(6) Etheridge, Syrian Churches, 1846 ; Badger, Nestorians and their 

Ritual, 1862. 

The Nestorians. 

During the earlier part of its history the Nestorian Church 
in the Persian Empire went through the trying experience 
of alternate patronage and persecution. It is difficult to 
say which was the more hurtful to it. The patronage was 
continuous over long periods of time ; the persecution 
took the form of sudden outbreaks of massacre. When the 
monarch smiled on the Church he took good care to keep 
it well in hand, appointing his own nominee as catholicos 
and deposing him if he did not give satisfaction. The 
Persian Nestorians being at feud with the orthodox Greeks 
in the Byzantine Empire, it was profitable to the king of 
Persia for the quarrel between the two Churches to come to 
the assistance of the antagonism between the two empires. 
But while this might suit the purposes of the sovereign, it 
was by no means pleasing to the Magi, who saw in the 
Church their deadly rival. Therefore whenever the Magian 
influence got the upper hand the Christians had to suffer. 
In consequence of one of these persecutions, which began in 
the year 608, the office of catholicos was vacant for twenty 

49S 



494 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



years, at the end of which time of gloom and desolation it 
was restored in the person of Jesu-Jabus,^ who lived to see 
the fall of the royal house of the Sassanidae (a.d. 651). 
During the patriarchate of Jesu-Jabus, Persia was over- 
whelmed by the Mohammedan tide of conquest, the con- 
sequence of which was oppression under a more anti- 
Christian tyranny than that of the Zoroastrian rulers it 
superseded. But this has not always been equally severe. 
The catholicos obtained from the caliph an assurance of 
protection for the Christians, with a right to practise their 
religion on the usual condition of paying tribute. He even 
got better terms from Omar at a later time, having the 
tribute remitted. The next caliph, Ibn Abi Taleb, con- 
firmed these privileges in a charter which expressed polite 
esteem for the Christianity of the Nestorians. No doubt, 
like his predecessors the Persian kings, he was astute enough 
to perceive the wisdom of favouring the heretics, both for 
the sake of weakening the Christian cause by means of 
divisions, and on account of the close alliance between the 
orthodox Church, which repudiated them, and the Byzantine 
Empire. In the year 762, under the enlightened caliphate 
of Bagdad, the Nestorian catholicos removed to that city, 
then a centre of learning and science, and there the Christian 
prelate lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot.^ 

During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church 
was allowed to go its own way, sometimes with kindly 
recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by 
harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognised institution 
within the territory of Islam. Then came the terrible 
barbaric invasions, which threatened to sweep civilisation 
away in the regions of the G-reek Empire, and which 
brought a night of three centuries on the opening day of 
Eussian Christianity. Their influence on the Mohammedan 
countries has not been noted with so much concern, and yet 
it would have been tremendous if these conquering heathen 
hordes had not been rapidly absorbed into Islam, with the 
ultimate result that the Turkish superseded the Arab rule 
^ Asseraan, tome iv. p. 87, ^ Ibid. iv. pp. 94 ff. 



LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDEANS, AND JACOBITES 4P5 



over the lands that Mohammed and his successors had won 
by the sword. In the year 1258, Hulaku Khan, the 
nephew of Genghis Khan, took Bagdad, and put an end to 
the cahphate in that city. He was tlie son of a Christian 
mother and he had a Christian wife. Indeed, he entered 
into negotiations with the pope and with the kings of 
France and England with a view to an alliance against 
the Saracens. Several of his successors publicly professed 
themselves as Christians; others stood for Islam. Their 
power rapidly declined. Meanwhile, although the Nes- 
torians were now very numerous, their moral influence was 
weakened and their church life degenerated. This unsatis- 
factory state of affairs continued for nearly a hundred and 
fifty years. We are now at the end of the fourteenth 
century — a time of overwhelming calamities. Another wave 
of invasion from the steppes of Asia next appeared, led by the 
dreadful Tim our, who seized and sacked Bagdad, Aleppo, 
and Damascus about the year 1400. He presented him- 
self as a champion of Islam with a policy very different 
from the Tartar khans of Bagdad ; for Timour savagely 
attacked the Syrian Christians, many of whom he captured, 
while those who succeeded in escaping fled to the inacces- 
sible moxmtains of Kurdistan. It was the break-up of the 
ancient Syrian Church that had had so large a share in 
the history of Mesopotamia and wide areas farther north 
and east for a thousand years. The Nestorians still lingered 
on ; they have remained to the present day ; but they have 
never recovered their ancient power and prestige.^ 

A curious account of the Nestorians is given by 
Albiruni, a Mohammedan writer who lived at Khiva be- 
tween A.D. 973 and 1048. He contrasts them with the 
Catholic party on account of their superior intellectual 
activity, saying, " Nestorius instigated people to examine 
for themselves, and to use the instruments of logic 
and analogy in meeting their opponents." ^ This author 

^ See Asseman, tome iv, p. 138 ff. 

2 Chronology of Ancient Nations, translated by E. Sachau (Oriental 
Translation Fund, 1879), p. 306. 



496 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



states that they agree with the Melchites ^ in the observ- 
ance of Lent, Christmas, and Epiphany, but differ from 
them as to all other feasts and fasts. At the feast of 
Maal'tha^ he tells iis, " They wander from the nave of their 
churches up to the roof in memory of the return of the 
Israelites to Jerusalem," an indication of Jewish associations 
on the part of the Nestorians. Albiruni declared that the 
majority of the inhabitants of Syria, Irak, and Khurasan 
were Nestorians. 

The lot of the Nestorians in modern times is pitiable, 
in the year 1843 four thousand of them were massacred 
by the Kurds. Layard describes his visit to a ghastly 
scene of skeletons, skulls, scattered bones, rotting garments 
on rocks and bushes and ledges of a precipice over which 
men, women, and children had been hurled. Everywhere 
he found villages devastated and churches in ruins, or, if in 
some cases they were roughly rebuilt, the people afraid to 
use them, because the patriarch was in prison and unable 
to reconsecrate the desecrated houses of worship. 

The wonder is that these oppressed people, excom- 
municated by the Greek Church and persecuted by their 
Mussulman neighbours, still retain their loyalty to what 
they believe to be the faith once delivered to the saints, 
even to the extent of martyrdom. They have very little 
to encourage them in what Protestants would call " the 
means of grace." Their liturgies are in old Syriac, which 
is unintelligible to the people of the present day — except 
where, as Layard says, it is translated into the vernacular. 
They hear no preaching. Their chief religious functions 
are fasts, of which there are 163 in the year. One con- 
sequence of their isolation is that, while they have sunk 
into ignorance, they have not degenerated in doctrine and 
ritual to the same extent as more active churches. They 
have no doctrine of transubstantiation, no purgatory ; 
they do not sanction Mariolatry or image worship ; nor 

^ The orthodox, as the party of the "king," i.e. the Byzantine emperor, 
a title applied to them in contrast to Nestorians. 
^ Ingressits. 



LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDvEANS, AND JACOBITES 497 



will they even allow icons to be exhibited in their churches. 
Men and women take the communion in both kinds. All 
five orders of clergy below the bishops are permitted to 
marry. Dr. Layard could not find any convents either for 
men or for women. 

Thus in many respects the modern Nestorians are 
nearer to European Protestantism than to Eoman Catholi- 
cism. While those who have succumbed to the Jesuit 
missions are bound to accept the full Western doctrine 
— if they really know what that is — the sturdy resist- 
ance of the old Nestorians to the papal pretensions 
throws them into an attitude which is essentially pro- 
testant. But they are neither Lutheran nor Calvinistic. 
They have any essential Western Protestantism in their 
constitution. Such ideas of Luther as the priesthood of all 
Christians and justification by faith are quite unknown to 
these scattered communities of the primitive Syrian Church. 
In their daily life the Syrian and Persian Nestorians 
have the reputation of being superior to their Mohammedan 
neighbours. They are honest, thrifty, perhaps even par- 
simonious. Such people are well worthy of the sympathy 
and assistance of their more fortunate and more enlightened 
fellow- Christians. The first necessity is to protect them 
from oppression and outrage. What they need is educa- 
tion, not ecclesiastical proselytising. They are said not 
to know the elements of the gospel. Then the best 
action of friendly English or American churches would be 
to evangelise them by teaching them the contents of their 
own Scriptures. Some good work of this kind is already 
going on under the American missionaries. 

One cause of the weakening of this ancient Syrian 
Church may be found in its divisions. In particular there 
are the Chaldseans and the Jacobites. 

The Chaldeans. 

The sect known as the " Chaldseans " is of recent origin, 
having originated in the year 1681, when the Nestorian 
32 



498 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



patriarch of Diarbekir, having quarrelled with the catholicos, 
turned to the pope, who consecrated him " patriarch of the 
Chaldaeans," thus creating the new office on his own 
authority. This movement was the result of a Jesuit 
mission in the East, and the Chaldseans are a sect spring- 
ing out of the influence of that mission.^ The Crusades 
raised hopes on the part of the papacy that if the stub- 
born Greek Church could not be induced to bow the neck 
to the pope, the Nestorians who were anathematised by that 
church might join hands with the Latin Church. Their very 
antagonism to the Byzantines might induce them to have 
friendly feelings towards the rival communion. Accordingly 
efforts were made to win over the Nestorians in the year 
1247, and again some forty years later ; but though Eastern 
courtesy or suppleness at first deceived the papal mis- 
sionaries with hopes of success, these were doomed to dis- 
appointment. Nothing more was done for more than three 
hundred years. Then, in the year 1552, a large secession 
from the Nestorian Church took place on the question of 
the election of a catholicos. The office had long been 
hereditary ; but at length a considerable body of clergy 
objected to this unhealthy arrangement, and on the death 
of a patriarch in the year 1551 they passed by his nephew 
and elevated to the vacant post a more popular candidate, 
Sind (or Sulaka). Now it was held to be requisite that 
three metropolitans should take part in the appointment of 
a patriarch. But there were not three to be found siding 
with the schism. The difficulty was got over by an 
appeal to Eome, and the Chaldaean catholicos was conse- 
crated by Pope Julius iii. At the same time a priest 
named Moses brought the Peshitta to Europe, and thus 
prepared for the study of Syrian Christianity by Western 
scholars. 

^ Etlieridge says that the Chaldseans came from both sections of Eastern 
Syrian Christians— the Nestorians and the Jacobites, and claims in support 
of this view the authority of Smith and D wight, "Researches in Armenia," 
in Grant's Nestorians or Lost Tribes, p. 170. But according to Badger 
they are simply a branch of the Nestorians. 



LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDEANS, AND JACOBITES 499 



It is not to be supposed, however, that the mere question 
of arranging a consecration was the only motive for so im- 
portant a step as this union. With some we may see in it 
the outcome of the repeated efforts of the Latin Church 
to absorb the Nestorians. The connection once established 
was continued, and the successors of Sind also obtained their 
consecration from Eome. Thus the Chaldseans are the 
Nestorians who have submitted to the papacy, and we may 
regard them as the fruits of the Jesuit missions in Syria. 
They are called by the Syrian Christians who have success- 
fully resisted the papal aggression, the Maghldbeen, that is, 
" the Conquered." The Chaldseans are now chiefly found 
in rural districts east of the Tigris, and they are com- 
paratively numerous at Elkoosh, where they have a large 
monastery bearing the name of Eabban Hormuz ; they have 
a catholicos at Bagdad. 

Abortive attempts at union with Eome have been made 
from time to time in other quarters. Thus Elias IL, bishop 
of Mosul, sent two deputations to Pope Paul iv., the first in 
the year 1607 and the second three years later. In a letter 
which accompanied his messengers he expressed a desire 
for a reconciliation between the Nestorians and the Latin 
Church. Again, in the year 1657, another approach from 
the Nestorian side was attempted, when Elias iii. addressed 
a letter to the congregation De Froipaganda Fide, expressing 
his readiness to join the Church of Eome on two conditions 
— (1) that the pope would allow the Nestorians to have a 
church of their own in the city of Eome ; (2) that they 
should not be required to alter their doctrine or discipline. 
Sancta simplicitas! Nothing could come of that. Subse- 
quently the Nestorian bishops of Ormus, who all bore 
the name of Simeon, more than once proposed plans of 
reconciliation with Eome, and one of them sent a confes- 
sion of faith to the pontiff to demonstrate their orthodoxy. 
But it all came to nothing. The main body of the 
Nestorians has remained in neglected isolation and poverty. 
Meanwhile the Eoman Catholic propaganda never ceases 
its efforts to gather these far-off wandering sheep into its 



500 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



fold.^ In the eighteenth century it won over a small body 
of Nestorians at Diabeker. But for the most part these 
attempts have been fruitless. 

The Jacobites. 

The Jacobites are the representatives of Monophysitism 
in the Syrian Church, and therefore they are at the antipodes 
of the Nestorians in regard to divergence from the Greek 
Church. They are named after Jacob surnamed Al Bardai, 
either from Bardaa, a city in Armenia, or, as is generally 
assumed, from a sort of felt which the Arabs call " barda," 
used for saddle-cloths, which he wore in a ragged condition, 
so that he went about, it was said, looking like a beggar. 
Born at Tela, a place also called Constantina, fifty-five miles 
east of Edessa, towards the close of the fifth century, he 
was brought up in a monastery, where he was educated in 
Monophysite theology and Greek and Syriac literature, and 
disciplined with severe asceticism, and whence his fame as 
a monk miracle-worker rapidly spread. When it reached 
the Empress Theodora she summoned him to Constantinople, 
reckoning him to be a valuable asset for the cause that 
she was intriguing to help forward. He came reluctantly, 
having no ambition for the honours that the empress heaped 
upon him. Detesting the luxury and worldly glamour of 
the court, he retired to a monastery near the city, where he 
remained for fifteen years, Hving the life of a complete 
recluse. But his work was yet before him. In spite of 
his long-practised habit of retirement, he was destined to a 
career of great activity. His call came from the desperate 
needs of his party. The weak Justinian, who had wavered 
for some time under the influence of his masterful consort, 
was brought at length to take vigorous measures for the 
enforcement of the Chalcedonian decrees. Bishops and 
inferior clergy who refused to accept them were re- 

* A Nestorian priest at Amadieh deplored to the American missionary. 
Dr. Grant, that his own father had been bastinadoed in order to compel him 
|;o become a Roman Catholic. See Etheridge, pp. 127, 128. 



LATER NBSTORIANS, CHALDEANS, AND JACOBITES 501 



moved from their posts and punished with exile and im- 
prisonment. The consequence was that over a very wide 
area where the Monophysite doctrine prevailed, the people 
were deprived of any ministry according to their own views, 
and therefore left, as Gibbon sneeringly remarks, to the 
choice of being " famished or poisoned." Then Harith the 
Magnificent, a sheikh of the Christian Arabs, brought the 
case of these unhappy people before their patroness 
Theodora, and so induced her to drag Jacob out of his cell 
and persuade him to return to Eastern Syria for the help 
of his fellow-religionists. 

Jacob was now launched on a perilous and exacting 
undertaking ; for his mission was to be followed out in 
defiance of the emperor's orders, and it demanded immense 
energy as well as heroic courage. The brave man rose to 
the occasion. He changed his manner of life. From 
being a shrinking recluse and letting the years glide 
by unmarked in the even course of the monastic life, he 
suddenly plunged into a sea of affairs, and undertook long 
journeys sometimes on foot, at other times on a fleet 
dromedary lent him by the sheikh. He traversed Asia 
Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, as far as Persia. Wherever 
he went he ordained bishops and priests, exhorted the 
people to fidelity to their creed, and encouraged them 
amid persecutions and disappointments. His enthusiasm 
was infectious, and his indefatigable labours were rewarded 
with brilliant success. Jacob was credited with having 
ordained a fabulous number of clergy.^ Thus the fire 
which Justinian thought he had stamped out had burst 
into flame again. The orthodox bishops were enraged. 
The emperor was indignant. He would have seized the 
obnoxious disturber of his happy settlement if only he 
could have done so. Orders were issued for the arrest of 
Jacob ; rewards were offered to any who could catch him. 
It was all in vain. Jacob seemed to be ubiquitous. He 
had friends among the Arabs who hid him whenever dpuger 

^ According to John of Asia 100.000, including eighty-nine bishops 
and two patriarchs. See Laud, Anecdot. Syr. ii. 251. 



502 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



threatened. So, while many an obscure Monophysite 
bishop was languishing in a dungeon, this chief offender 
not only remained at large, but continued his labours 
among the people in promoting the cause to which he 
was devoted, at the risk of his liberty, perhaps his life. 

This is the bright page of the story. The sequel is 
very disappointing. Like many another enthusiast, Jacob 
failed in administration. His very simpHcity, preserved 
for so many years in the seclusion of his cell, unfitted him 
for dealing with designing men. Unhappily there were 
some of this kind about him who played the unsuspecting 
saint for their own purposes, and all unconsciously he 
became a tool in their hands. The consequence was that 
the Monophysite party was split into miserable factions, 
which sometimes came to blows and even murder. The 
most important and wide-reaching of these disturbances 
was occasioned by the conduct of Paul, whom Jacob had 
ordained " Patriarch of Antioch." During the persecution 
Paul and three other leading bishops of his party were 
summoned to Constantinople, where they were harshly 
treated, till one after another all yielded to the combined 
pressure of government authority and popular disfavour. 
It was purely an act of weakness, and Paul immediately 
shrank away into retirement, taking refuge in Arabia 
with Moudir, Harith's successor. As soon as Jacob heard 
of the defection of the patriarch whom he had himself 
nominated, he indignantly excommunicated the unhappy 
man. But Paul was heartily ashamed of his conduct, 
and after three years Jacob acknowledged his penitence 
and consented to receive him into communion again 
after a synod of Monophysites had sanctioned this 
proposal. That, however, did not end the trouble. It 
only transferred it to the Monophysites at Alexandria, 
who appear to have had other and earlier grounds 
of complaint against the culprit, previously well known 
in their city. Peter the Monophysite patriarch pro- 
nounced his deposition — a distinct breach of canon law, 
for Alexandria had no jurisdiction over Antioch; the two 



LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDEANS, AND JACOBITES 503 



patriarchs were of equal rank and mutually independent. 
Jacob went to Alexandria to endeavour to settle the 
matter. But he was not the man for delicate negotiations. 
The partj of Peter won him over to signing his assent to 
the deposition of Paul, though not to the excommunication 
of him. The result was a schism beginning in the year 
576, which, as John of Asia says, "spread like an ulcer." ^ 
The misfortune was that both parties were Monophysite, 
both therefore under the ban of the Chalcedonian party 
and the imperial government. All other attempts at a 
settlement having failed, Jacob set out a second time for 
Alexandria in the vain hope of making terms of peace. 
He was now an old man, wearied and vexed with the 
constant strife in the midst of which his lot was cast, so 
utterly against his will and nature, since he would have 
infinitely preferred the quiet seclusion of his cell from 
which he had been dragged against his will. He never 
reached his destination. His party was stricken with a 
serious illness at the monastery of Cassianus on the borders 
of Egypt, and Jacob and three members of the company 
died there (July A.D. 578). Of course there were rumours 
of foul play. But no evidence was brought forward to 
confirm them. It was perhaps a happy ending to a life 
which at its zenith had shone with brilliant success, but 
the later half of which had been overcast with gloom and 
failure. Jacob was a good, unambitious man, an enthusiastic 
evangelist, an indefatigable peace-maker ; but the larger 
half of the Church denounced his evangel, and his old friends 
whom he desired to reconcile would not have his peace. 

Meanwhile the persecution of the Syrian Monophysites, 
like that of the Nestorians at an earlier date, was driving 
them into the hands of the Persians. Then divisions of a 
doctrinal character appeared among them. There were 
the Niobites, led by Niobes, a teacher who maintained the 
perfect unity of Christ as distinguished from the more 
moderate Monophysites, among whom some distinction 
between the Divinity and the humanity was allowed. 

^ John of Asia (trans, by Payne Smith), p. 282. 



504 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

Then there were the Tritheites, who appeared m the reign 
of Justin II. under the leadership of John Askunages 
(" Bottle-shoes ") who, according to Bar Hebraeus stated his 
views thus : " I confess one nature of Christ, the Incarnate 
Word ; but in the Trinity I reckon the natures and sub- 
stances and godheads according to the number of the per- 
sons." There was a clearness and logical consistency in the 
views of these people not attained by less daring thinkers. 
If the humanity of Christ is so absorbed and transmuted 
as to be entirely lost in His Divinity, either you must have 
a Patripassion or at least a SabeUian Monarchianism, or 
you must find His distinctive individuality in His Divine 
nature. In the latter case, if as God He is a distinct 
individual by the side of the Father, you have two Gods, 
and as the same is said of the Holy Ghost, the consequence 
is Tri theism. Later there appeared people known as 
Tetratheists, in consequence of the teaching of Damianus, 
a Syrian, the Severian or Monophysite patriarch of Alex- 
andria — Peter's successor — at the end of the sixth century. 
He recognised first the essential personality of the one 
substance, God in Himself, and then a separate individu- 
ality for each of the Three Persons of the Trinity. His 
opponent, Peter of Calinicus, would make him push his 
argument further, and so come to have a separate divinity 
for each property of God, a perfect pantheon, if he would 
be consistent with his root principle. But John of Asia 
describes him as an untrustworthy and inconsistent man.^ 
Other divisions of the Monophysites are more closely 
associated with Alexandria and the Coptic Church than 
with the Syrian. But they have lingered on in Syria 
down to the present day. The Jacobites are now mostly 
found in Mesopotamia, especially at Mosul and Mardeen. 
There aie scarcely any left in Palestine and few in 
Damascus. But they have a monastery at Jerusalem, 
and some of them are to be found at Hamah and Aleppo. 
Etheridge calculates that apart from the colony at Malabar 
the total number of Jacobites is now probably not more 
» John of Asia, p. 306. 



LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDiEANS, AND JACOBITES 505 

than 150,000.^ They claim to be descended from the 
original Hebrew Christians and designate themselves " B'ne 
Israel." In their church government they are very hier- 
archical, although their orders are under suspicion since 
they are derived from Jacob Al Bardai, whose own ordina- 
tion to the episcopate has been questioned, for some have 
maintained that he was only ordained as a presbyter. 

In conclusion it is to be observed that the Syrian 
Church has made no inconsiderable contributions to litera- 
ture, although Eenan's generalised verdict of mediocrity 
must be applied to the mass of it. First we have the 
Peshitta, the standard Syriac Bible, the Vulgate of the 
East. Then there are several versions and successive 
revisions made by Jacobite scholars in the interest of the 
Monophysite doctrine. The first of these was produced 
by Aksenaya, or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabbogh, with the 
assistance of his chorepiscopus Polycarp, winch appeared in 
the year 508, and became popular among the Jacobites; it 
was superseded by later revisions, especially that of Thomas 
of Heraclea, bishop of the same city of Mabbogh early in 
the seventh century. A hundred years later a final attempt 
at revision of the Old Testament was made by Jacob of 
Edessa, but his work does not seem to have met with 
acceptance, and he did not proceed to revise the New Testa- 
ment. The Melchite or Greek Church of Palestine had its 
own revision in the local Aramaic dialect, a dialect corre- 
sponding to the Jewish Targums, and probably more nearly 
approaching that spoken by our Lord than that of any 
other version. Meanwhile the Nestorians held to the old 
Peshitta, and opposed stolid indifference to the only attempt 
ever made to give them a more accurate version, when 
Mar Abha i., a catholicos in the middle of the sixth 
century, having studied Greek under a teacher at Edessa 
named Thomas, with his assistance made a new translation 
into Syriac of all the Old Testament and perhaps also the 
New. 

The story of Syriac literature properly begins with 

^ Syrian CMirches, p. 149, note. 



506 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Tatian's Diatessaron. Next comes the scholar Bardaisan, 
whom the Church failed to retain and who has been 
called " the last of the Gnostics." While his authorship 
of the important work De Fato, already briefly described,^ 
is doubtful, he is stated to have written a History 
of Armenia and a book called Rypomnemata Indim, 
compiled out of information he obtained from Indian 
ambassadors on their way through Edessa to the Eoman 
court. Jacob of Msibis is a famous Syrian writer of the 
fourth century ; but the Homilies once ascribed to him are 
now said to have been written by Aphraates, who was 
followed towards the end of the century by Ephraim,^ and 
the poets Balai or Balseus, who has given his name to the 
pentasyllabic metre, and Cyrillona, who composed a poem 
" on the locusts, and on Divine chastisements, and on the 
Huns." The present form of the famous " Doctrine of 
Addai" — the work in which the legend of Abgar is enshrined, 
and where we have the narrative of the early evangelising 
of Edessa and the first bishops and martyrs — cannot be 
earlier than the fourth century. Only fragments of the 
works of Rabbulas have been found. Previous to elevation 
to the episcopate, his successor Ibas had been one of the 
translators of Theodore's works. The Monophysites claimed 
Simeon the Stylite as sharing their views, and an eighth 
century manuscript contains a letter ascribed to him and 
addressed to the Emperor Leo, and another manuscript of 
the same period contains three letters credited with the 
same authorship ; all of which documents, if genuine, go 
to show that he did not accept the decision of Chalcedon. 
At the end of the fifth century we come upon Jacob of 
Serugh, who was described as " the flute of the Holy Spirit 
and the harp of the believing Church." He left a mass 
of poems. According to the historian Bar Hebrseus, he 
had seventy amanuenses to copy out his 760 metrical 
homihes, as well as his commentaries and letters, odes and 
hymns. The most famous Syrian writer of the sixth 
century is John of Asia, whose Ecclesiastical History is 
1 See p. 466. ^ gee p. 473. 



LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDtEANS, AND JACOBITES 507 

our chief source of information for the period covered by 
the third part of it — which is all we possess in a complete 
form. John was a missionary among the heathen of 
Asia, Lydia, Caria, and Phrygia, and he was remarkably 
successful in winning converts from paganism to Chris- 
tianity. Yet he was a Monophysite. From these facts 
we may draw two instructive inferences. First, if there 
was something peculiarly stimulating to missionary enthusi- 
asm and promising for its fruitfulness in Nestorianism — 
as we saw may have been the case,^ — its extreme opposite 
was not excluded from the evangelistic mission. Second, 
while both Nestorianism on the one hand and Mono- 
physitism on the other were anathematised by the orthodox 
Church, and the leading supporters of both heresies ex- 
communicated, the mighty spirit of the gospel, which is 
larger than all sects and creeds, was working through them 
for the extension of the kingdom of God. If we may 
apply to these two bodies the great test " by their fruits 
ye shall know them," we shall come to the delightful con- 
clusion that " the root of the matter " was in both of them, 
although the good men who led the dominant Church were 
unhappily not enlightened or liberal enough to perceive it. 
When John returned from his missionary activities, which 
had been honoured so highly in their success, he was made 
Monophysite bishop of Ephesus. He suffered imprison- 
ment during the persecution under Justin in the year 571. 
There will be a peculiar interest in reading his narrative 
when we consider his statement that " most of these his- 
tories were written at the very time when the persecutions 
were going on." ... He says, " it was even necessary 
that friends should remove the leaves on which these 
chapters are inscribed, and every other particle of writing, 
and conceal them in various places, where they sometimes 
remained for two or three years." ^ Passing over a number 
of obscure writers, we come to Jacob of Edessa, the most 
famous Monophysite writer at the end of the seventh 
century. Dr. Wright says, " In the literature of his country 
* See p. 480. ^ Hist. Eecl. (trans, by Payne Smith), p. 168. 



508 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Jacob holds much the same place as Jerome among the 
Latin Fathers. He was, for his time, a man of great 
culture and wide reading, being familiar with Greek 
and with older Syriac writers."^ His writings comprise 
commentaries, liturgical compositions, history, philosophy, 
grammar. Unfortunately Jacob's chronicle, which would 
have been of great value as a continuation of Eusebius down 
to his own time, has been lost. In his Syriac grammar he 
used a device he had invented, consisting of vowel signs to 
be written on a line with and between the consonants, after 
the European pattern of writing. 

Thus far Syrian literature has chiefly flourished among 
the Jacobites. The seventh and eighth century saw 
more Nestorian writers — Babhai the elder, a prolific 
writer credited with the authorship of eighty-three or 
eighty-four works, including a commentary on the whole 
Bible; Isho-yabh of Gedhala, author of commentaries, 
histories, and homilies ; Sahdona, who wrote two volumes 
on the monastic life ; and many others, among the most 
famous of whom was Abraham the Lame, who wrote a book 
of exhortations, discourses on repentance, etc. In the 
ninth century the products of Syrian literature are more 
scarce, though some of them are historically important. 
One of the most valuable was Dionysius of Tell Mahre's 
great work, his Annals, while Thomas of Marga, whose 
acquaintance we have already made,^ belongs to this 
period. The eleventh century is meagrely represented by 
Syrian literature ; but in the twelfth we reach the famous 
Jacobite writer, Dionysius Bar Salibi, created bishop of 
Mar 'ash in 1145. He left commentaries on the Old and 
New Testaments, giving a material or literal, and a spiritual 
or mystical explanation of each book ; a compendium of 
theology ; and many other works. In the next century we 
come to the learned historian Bar Hebrceus, who was born 
in the year 1226. During his youth he had studied Greek, 
Arabic, rhetoric, and medicine. In 1253 he became bishop 
of Aleppo; he died in the year 1286. His Ecclesiastical 

^ Hist. Syr. Literature, p. 143. ^ See p. 484. 



LATER NESTORIANS, CHALDvEANS, AND JACOBITES 509 

Chronicle, written in the simple style of a man of culture, 
which contrasts pleasantly with the swollen verbosity of 
so many Oriental writers of the later period, is a valuable 
source of information for the historical writer in the 
present day. Bar Hebrseus was a Jacobite. The most 
prominent Nestorian writer of the same period is Abdh- 
isho bar Berikha, who died in the year 1318. His chief 
work is a theological treatise called Marganitha {i.e. 
" The Pearl written in the year 1298. The author him- 
self translated it into Arabic. Mai has edited it with a 
Latin translation, and Badger has given an English trans- 
lation in his work on the Nestorians.^ Abdh-isho pro- 
duced a number of other works, among which is his 
Paradise of Eden, a collection of fifty theological poems. 

^ The Nestorians, ii. p. 380 ff. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 

Asseman, BiUioth. Orient, tome iv. ; Geddes, History of the Church oj 
Malabar^ 1694 ; Hough, History of Christianity in India, vol. i., 
1839 ; Rae, The Syrian Church in India, 1892. 

The remarkable enterprise of the Syrian missions promoted 
by the impulse of the Nestorian movement is registered in 
the scattering of metropolitan sees over a vast area of 
Central and Eastern Asia. Impelled by two forces, the 
persecution of the orthodox Church in combination with 
the Byzantine Empire which drove them into exile, and the 
zeal for spreading the gospel which converted their banish- 
ment into a benediction, the Nestorians went much further 
than was necessary merely to secure immunity from 
molestation; and wherever they went they planted the 
standard of the cross. So we find metropoHtan bishoprics 
in Syria, Armenia, and Arabia ; at Elam, Nisibis, Bethgerma, 
and Carach in Persia ; at Halavan or Halach on the confines 
of Media; at Mara in Korassan; at Hara in Camboya; at Raja 
and Tarbistan on the Caspian ; at Dailen, Samarcand, and 
Mavaralnabar ; at Tauket or Taugut — a country of Great 
Tartary ; in Casgar, in Turkistan, in India, in China. 
From many of these centres all traces of ancient Chris- 
tianity have long since disappeared, swept away in the 
deluge of Mongolian invasions, stamped out by Moham- 
medan tyranny, or, if spared for a time, generally only left to 
perish in crass ignorance and spiritual inanition. But in 
some few places it still lives on among numerous adherents. 

The most important of the old Syrian churches existing 
in our own day is the community of ancient Christians 

510 



THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 511 



consisting of 400,000 people inhabiting the mountain 
slopes and valleys and coast of Malabar, the most enlight- 
ened of whom live at Travancore. Local tradition assigns 
the origin of this Indian Church to St. Thomas the Apostle, 
who is said to have " landed at Malankara, an island in the 
lagoon near Crangamore, preached to the natives and 
baptised many converts." ^ According to the legends of the 
land, he planted seven churches and ordained two priests 
in this district, converted the king and all the people of 
Mailapore, went on to China and was there equally success- 
ful, and returned to Mailapore, where he roused the jealousy 
of the Brahmins, who excited the people to stone him, 
after which one of them pierced him with a lance. When 
these parts were discovered to Europe by Portuguese 
adventurers in the year 1517, among other ruins and relics 
the remains of a chapel were seen, digging beneath which 
the travellers found some bones, which they identified as 
undoubtedly the relics of the apostle on account of their 
superior whiteness. 

Turning from local legend, the late origin of which 
must be admitted since we have no traces of its antiquity, 
and it can be accounted for apart from tradition, as we 
shall see in proceeding with the story, when we come to 
the literary records. Here we have the earliest account of 
St. Thomas's mission to India in the Acts of Judas Thomas, 
previously referred to,^ which belongs to the third, or even 
the fourth century, written by a man named Leucius, the 
author of several apocryphal " Acts." This work tells us 
that in the division of districts among the apostles India 
fell to the lot of Thomas. He was unwilling to go so far 
on so hazardous a mission. Then Christ appeared to him in 
a vision, encouraging him with a promise to be with him. 
Thomas remaining obstinate and even growing angry, Christ 
sold him to an Indian merchant as a slave carpenter. 
Arriving in India after fantastic scenes by the way, Thomas 
was introduced to the King Gundaphorus. When this king 
learnt what his trade was, he gave him money with which 
* Rae, The Syrian Church in India, p. 15. ^ P. 474. 



512 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

to build a palace. Several times the apostle sent for 
more money, describing to the king the progress of his 
work from walls to roof; but he was spending all the 
money he got on widows and orphans and other needy 
folk. So when Gundaphorus came to take possession of 
his palace no palace was to be seen. Thomas's friends told 
him of the Apostle's charities and of the ascetic living of the 
holy man. " The king having heard this, stroked his face 
with his hands, shaking his head for a long time." He 
was about to kill both Thomas and the merchant, flaying 
and burning them, when his brother died and went to 
heaven, where he saw a palace, which he was told by 
the angels Thomas had built for the king. Coming back 
to life while his body was being put in the burial robe, the 
prince informed the astonished monarch of what he had 
learnt in the world above. The result was the conversion 
of king and people. After the fourth century the con- 
nection of Thomas with India was widely accepted both in 
the Eastern and in the Western Churches.^ 

We have here a double confusion, first in the person of 
the missionary and then in the country. There are two 
Thomases and several Indias. Centuries later, a Nestorian 
missionary named Thomas went to India, and his mission 
has been transferred to the credit of the apostle ; then the 
word "India" was used in early times very vaguely for 
the countries about the south of the Eed Sea and the 
Persian Gulf — ^Abyssinia, Southern Arabia, perhaps also 
Southern Persia.^ The orthodox tradition of the life of 
Thomas assigns Parthia as his district.^ According to 

* e.g. Jerome, Epis. 70. 

2 Harnack holds that the reference in the Acts of Thomas is to " the 
North-West Territory of our modern India" [Expansion of Christianity, 
Yol. ii. p. 299). 

* Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 1 ; of. Clementine Recognitions, ix. 29, and 
Socrates, Hist. Eccl. i. 19. According to Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5, and 
Socrates, Hist. Eccl. iv. 8, he was buried at Edessa. The Roman Martyr- 
ology reconciles the two stories in a measure by bringing the apostle's bones 
from India to Edessa, whence they are conveyed by Crusaders to Ortona in 
Italy. According to Clement of Alexandria, he died a natural death, Strom. 
iv. 9, 73. See Hastings' Diet. BiUe, article "Thomas." 



THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 513 

Eusebius, another apostle, Bartholomew, had preached to the 
Indians.^ But it seems not unlikely that the historian was 
misled by the name of the Sindians in the region of the 
Bosphorus, over whom kings of the house of Ptolemy 
ruled, because Bartholomew's traditional field of labour was 
the district of the Bosphorus. 

We have more definite information about Pantsenus, 
the head of the theological school at Alexandria, who gave 
up his pleasant work in that centre of culture and luxury 
to go as a missionary to " India." ^ Eusebius identifies this 
" India " with the scene of Bartholomew's activity. That, 
however, is most improbable, if the locality assigned to the 
apostle is correct. Since there can be no doubt that the 
name is " India " in this case, there is here no possibility 
of confusion with the Sindians. But the question is what 
" India " ? Eusebius tells us that Pantsenus found a copy 
of the Gospel according to the Hehrews, which he calls " the 
Gospel according to Matthew," written "in the Hebrew 
language." Therefore there must have been Christians 
in the place before him, and in all probability these 
were Jewish Christians. The Jews travelled far in their 
trading journeys, and it is quite possible that this distant 
Christian movement was in the country we now know as 
India. On the other hand, we have no definite trace of 
Christianity there before the arrival of the Nestorians. It 
is therefore more probable Pantaenus's " India " was one 
of those parts nearer to Egypt to which the name was 
sometimes given. 

It is also conceivable that natives of India learnt about 
Christianity through their own visits to Alexandria, 
and carried the gospel back to their country on their 
return home. Among the many nationalities represented 
in that cosmopolitan centre of trade much earlier than this 
were people who bore the name " Indian." Dion Cassius, 
whose date is about a.d. 100, writes of Ethiopians, Arabians, 
Bactrians, Scythians, Persians, and Indians flocking to 

1 Hist. Ecd. V. 10. 

^ Ibid. ; also Jerome, De vir. ill. 36. 

33 



514 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Alexandria.^ The order in which these names stand 
suggests that the Indians who come last were from the 
most remotely eastern of all the nationalities mentioned, 
and since they follow the Persians we should infer that 
their country was farther off than Persia. If we could he 
sure of Jerome's information and accuracy, we should have 
a clear proof that India proper was the country to which 
Pantaenus went, for he says in his letter to Magnus, an 
orator at Eome, "Pantsenus, a philosopher of the Stoic 
school," — he had been a Stoic previous to his conversion to 
Christianity, — " was on account of his great reputation for 
learning sent by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, to India 
to preach Christ to the Brahmins and philosophers there." ^ 
It would be very interesting to think that a man who had 
passed from Greek philosophy to Christianity had been 
selected as a missionary to the Indian Brahmins and had 
actually attempted the conversion of the caste which our 
missionaries find almost unapproachable, though appar- 
ently without satisfactory results, or he would hardly have 
abandoned the work to resume his chair at the Alexandrian 
theological school. But unfortunately J erome is notoriously 
inaccurate, being often proved guilty of rushing at con- 
clusions on insufficient evidence, and filling in the lacunae 
of information with the creations of imagination, though 
no doubt these are shaped with regard to certain degrees 
of verisimilitude. We must not attach much weight to 
his assertions when they go beyond Eusebius and other 
earlier writers. It would be enough that Jerome knew that 
Pantainus had been sent to some place called " India," for him 
to conclude as a matter of course that the Stoic had gone 
to evangelise the Brahmins. His assertion may be taken, 
however, as valuable to a certain extent. It shows that 
early in the fifth century it was believable to a scholarly 
man with large knowledge of the world, that India itself 
might have been visited by a Christian missionary before 
the end of the second century. Therefore in Jerome's 

1 Smith, Did. Christ. Biog. vol. iv. p. 182^, note a. 
^ Epist. Ixx. 



THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 



515 



day at latest our India was known and not inaccessible. 
This is probable on other grounds. Moreover, Indian in- 
fluences are to be traced in Alexandrian philosophy and in 
Christian Gnosticism. There is no insuperable difficulty 
in believing that the gospel may have reached the country 
before the end of the second century. Still, even if we 
could settle this question in the affirmative, the answer 
would not be of much value. We can see no signs of any 
results of the early mission ; even if this did exist it would 
appear to have been abortive. Pantaenus's return and 
resumption of his old work, as already indicated, point to 
an unsatisfactory ending to the ambitious project. A 
mission projected in this spasmodic way is not likely to be 
successful. It is heroic to attack the most impregnable 
fortress if the attempt is adequate to the aim ; otherwise 
it is Quixotic. 

Over against Jerome's authority in favour of India 
proper — so unreliable in itself — we have not only to set 
the loose way in which the name was commonly used, 
but also the absence of all real evidence in the land 
itself previous to the Nestorian period. The local tradition 
goes back to St. Thomas, passing over Pantsenus in silence. 
That may be explicable on the ground that the passion for 
an apostolic foundation was common in the churches, while 
the visit of an unsuccessful missionary might be mercifully 
forgotten. Still, we have no evidence to point to the 
existence of any Christian Church in India at this early 
period, and that is the real question with which we are 
concerned, whatever may have been the objective of the 
Alexandrian scholar's expedition. Even Dion Chrysostom's 
Indians may have been the people just to the east of 
Persia, in the country since known as Beluchistan — very 
far from the Indian Christians discovered in later times, 
whose home is in the south ; if Pantaenus did go to that 
country, north of the Arabian Sea, he would have had 
nothing to do with the founding of the Church in 
Travancore. 

Among the signatories at the Nicene Council we have 



516 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the name of " John of Persia in all Persia and great India." 
The vastness of the area here assigned to John is such that 
he could not have exercised supervision over it, and 
we must take the vague phrase to mean that whatever 
Christians there were in these parts of the East were 
supposed to be under his authority. This does not carry 
the assertion that there were Christians at the time in 
India, much less that it was our India, although the word 
"great," which does not seem to have had a definite 
geographical meaning when applied to India, suggests an 
indefinitely large region. 

Towards the end of the fourth century we have the 
remarkable story of Frumentius recorded by Eufinus, who 
associates it with " India " ; ^ but there is no doubt that he 
means Abyssinia. To this therefore we must return later 
on, meanwhile dismissing it as having no connection with 
Indian Christianity. 

About the same time we come to "Theophilus the 
Indian." According to Philostorgius, he was an Arian who 
went to India to spread the doctrine of his party there. 
But the Arian historian obliges us by adding " that these 
Indians are now called Homeritse, instead of their old name 
of Sabseans, which they received from the city of Saba, the 
chief city of the whole nation." ^ A little further on he 
says that " Constantius sent ambassadors to those who were 
formerly called Sabseans, but are now known as Homeritse, 
a tribe which is descended from Abraham by Keturah." 
He adds that the territory which they inhabit is called by 
the Creeks "Arabia Magna" and "Arabia Felix." ^ He 
identifies Saba with the Sheba whose queen came to see 
Solomon. Here then we have the clearest possible evidence 
that the name " India " was used for South Arabia. How- 
ever, while this plainly shows that Theophilus had nothing 
to do with our India, his story is not devoid of interest on 
its own account. 

Thus, when we examine the various successive references 

^ Ecd. Hist. ii. 9-14. ^ Philostorgius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 6. 

' Ibid. iii. 4. 



THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 517 

to early Christian associations with India, they all melt into 
vagueness, or indicate some other region than that of the 
present Christians of St. Thomas. We have here six 
persons who are apparently carrying on Christian work in 
India, and yet to none of them can we assign our present 
India as the scene of their labours. Thomas, Bartholomew, 
Pantsenus, John of the large episcopate, Frumentius, Theo- 
philus — all of these men, when their Indian claims are 
examined, seem to be associated with other regions. South 
Arabia, Abyssinia, the neighbourhood of the Bosphorus, the 
country immediately east of Persia, all these parts have 
borne the name or have been mistaken for India, and it is 
among them that the work of the early missionaries is 
distributed. Of course it cannot be denied that Christianity 
may have reached India proper, or at all events the South 
India of the later Church, at an earlier time than we 
know. That is another matter. We have no evidence to 
indicate that it was so, and all our available evidence 
points in other directions. There we must leave the 
question. 

We come out of these mists of legend into clear 
daylight in the Nestorian period. There is no doubt that 
the great wave of missionary enthusiasm that swept over 
so large a part of Central Asia poured down into Southern 
India, or, more probably, came direct across the sea to the 
region of Travancore, then passed over to Ceylon, and 
ultimately reached China. The ancient Christian com- 
munity in India is known as the " Syrian Church " of India. 
This name should not lead us to suppose that it is composed 
of Syrian colonists. Its members consist of the native 
people of their province. But the name reminds us that 
their Christianity sprang from the activity of the Syrian 
Church in these parts. The consequences of its origin are 
seen in many customs, notably in the use of the Syrian 
liturgies. Its theology is Nestorian, after the pattern of 
Syrian Nestorianism. 

The earliest distinct witness to the existence of the 
Syrian Christian in India is afforded by the Alexandrian 



518 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



merchant Cosmas, who was surnamed Indicopleustes on 
account of the fame of his voyage in the Indian seas early 
in the sixth century. He wrote a curious book, full of 
strange fancies, entitled Universal Christian Topography. 
In this work Cosmas states that he found a church with 
clergy and a congregation in Ceylon, and also Christians 
" in the land called Malabar, where the pepper grows." At 
Caliana — the coast country south of Bombay — there was 
a bishop who held his appointment from Persia. Keturning 
to Ceylon, Cosmas adds, " The island hath also a church of 
Persian Christians who have settled there from Persia, and 
a deacon, and all the apparatus of public worship." ^ If 
this is correct, we must regard the Malabar Church as in 
the first place consisting of refugees from persecution in 
Persia, like the Huguenots in England and the Pilgrim 
Fathers in America. But the Ceylon refugees never 
appear to have associated with the natives, and conse- 
quently their Church melted away and in course of 
time disappeared. Cosmas was himself a Nestorian 
and a friend of the catholicos in Persia. He would 
therefore look on the co-religionists whom he had dis- 
covered to his surprise in these remote parts with peculiar 
interest. The Persian navigators who came into com- 
munication with the Malabar coast travelled further 
and carried the gospel to the Coromandel coast, and so 
were brought into contact with the great empire of the 
PaUavas. 

While satisfactory documentary evidence of the origin 
of Christianity in these parts is lacking, this is partly 
made up for by the irrefragable testimony of monuments. 
In the year 1547 a cross with an inscription in Pahlavi, 
the language of the Persian Empire at the time of the 
Sassanian dynasty, was found on the hill now known as 
St. Thomas's Mount at Mailapore, the chief town of this 
district. The date assigned to it is the seventh or at 
latest the eighth century. There is a similar cross with 
the same inscription in a church at Cottayam in North 

^ Quoted in Rae's The Syrian Church in India, p. 116. 



THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 519 



Travancore. A translation of the inscription is as 
follows : — 

"In punishment by the cross (was) the suffering of this One; 
He who is the true Christ, and God alone, and Guide ever pure.*' ^ 

This inscription is doubly important. In the first place, 
the use of the Pahlavi language in which it is composed is 
an unmistakable testimony to the antiquity of Christianity 
in the places where the crosses are set up, helping us to 
fix an approximate date for them. In the second place, 
the singular wording of the inscription contains an apparent 
statement of Nestorian doctrine. The second line seems 
to refer to the Trinity. The order in which the Three 
Persons occur is not so very surprising when we consider 
that it is the order of St. Paul's doxology. But the couplet 
appears to identify all Three Persons of the Trinity as 
present in the Incarnation and as therefore present also at 
the crucifixion. The same idea is found in later Nestorian 
documents; it was expressly condemned in the synod 
of Diamper (a.d. 1599). The doctrine thus expressed 
comes very near to Patripassianism ; but then it must be 
remembered that, as held by Nestorians, who made a sharp 
distinction between the two natures in Christ, it did not 
involve the suffering of the Divine Persons in the way in 
which the union of the natures would imply. It was the 
human nature that was tortured on the cross and that 
died. With this view it was possible to think of the 
Divine nature in Christ as consisting of the whole Godhead, 
and yet not be Patripassian. 

There is a second cross in the old church at Cotta- 
yam — with a modification of the curious inscription 
— making three of these crosses in all ; but this is 
assigned to the tenth century. A panel in the same 
slab of stone, similar in shape and decoration to that 

^ The Indian Antiquary, vol. iii., 1874, pp. 308-316, article by A. C. 
Burnell, Ph.D.. of the Madras Civil Service, on "Some Pahlavi Inscriptions 
in South India," quoted by Rae in notes to chapter ix. p. 370. But there 
is some doubt as to the correctness of this translation. 



520 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



containing the cross, has on each side of it the figure of a 
peacock. Here we first meet with the mysterious symbol 
associated with St. Thomas in the later times of the Syrian 
Church in India. Various fantastic legends given by 
successive travellers — by Marco Polo, by John de Marig- 
noUi, and lastly by Duarte Barbosa as late as the sixteenth 
century — bring peacocks in some way into the story of 
the apostle. Evidently the symbolism has been borrowed 
from the mythology of the neighbouring Hindu temple, 
the Purana of which tells how Siva's wife appeared to her 
lord in the form of a peafowl, the name of which in 
Sanscrit is mayil. This is given as an explanation of the 
name Mailapore, Mayil-a-pur — " Peacock-town." 

While this church at Mailapore declined and died out, 
the church at Malabar continued to flourish, assimilating 
the native population, and obtaining pohtical status and 
recognised rights of self-government. These are registered 
in two copperplate charters, one of the date A.D. 774, 
recording a grant by King Yira Eaghava Chakravarti to 
Irair Corthan of Crangamore as the representative of the 
Christian community, making him sovereign merchant of 
Kerala ; the other granted to the Syrians of St. Thomas, 
about the year 824, with the sanction of King Sthanu's 
palace-major, confirming a gift of land to Muruvan Sapor 
Iso and the Tarasa Church. Further intercommunication 
between State and Church and confirmation of the Church's 
rights followed. In the year 745, according to the local 
tradition, Knaye Thomas, or Thomas of Cana, came with 
a fresh band of emigrants from Bagdad, Mneveh, and 
Jerusalem. Some have attributed the name " Christians 
of St. Thomas " to a confusion of this leader of the more 
recent additions to the Church with the Apostle Thomas. 
These new-comers appear to have settled to the south of 
the original Syrian community. The Christian Church 
in India is thus divided into two portions, a northern 
and a southern. The latter consists of people of fairer 
complexion than their brethren to the north. Yet another 
body of refugees appeared in the year 822 led by two 



THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST 521 

JSTestorian Persians, Mar Sapor and Mar Perog, the former 
of whom has been identified with the Sapor to whom the 
grant of land was made as recorded in the copperplate. 
The Syrian Christians were now important people in 
Malabar, both socially and politically. But before long 
their Church declined in missionary fervour and religious 
vitality. It has never developed any intellectual energy 
or made any contribution to theology. 

When Cheraman Perumal, the last emperor of Kerala, 
became a Mohammedan and died while on a visit to Arabia, 
the country came under Mussulman rule. We now reach 
an almost blank period of five hundred years in the history 
of the Syrian Church in India, during which, however, 
the Christians were so powerful that at one time they had 
their own kings. Subsequently they came under the 
government of Cochin. By this time the Church had 
become spiritually torpid. The ceremonies were duly 
performed. As far as we can see, they were the chief 
functions of religion. Meanwhile the Christians lived as a 
superior close caste, so completely had their old missionary 
zeal died out. They even came to imitate the Hindoos in 
caste regulations of diet and avoidance of pollution. 

The next period in the history of Christianity in India 
is that of the Eoman Catholic missions which resulted from 
the great religious revival in the Western Church during 
the thirteenth century, and were carried on by those 
wonderful democratic missionary bodies, the Franciscans and 
the Dominicans. Dm-ing the years 1321 to 1323, J ordanus, 
a Frenchman of the Dominican order, the author of the 
Mirabilia, was in Malabar. Thence he wrote a circular letter 
to his brethren of the two orders of Friars, commending 
India as a sphere for missionary activity. Nothing is more 
interesting in this story than the combination abroad of 
the orders the members of which were rivals at home. 
Jordanus the Dominican was accompanied by four Francis- 
cans when he embarked for Quilon. A storm drove them 
on the island of Salsette, near Tana, where they were 
kindly received by the Nestorian Christians. Describing 



522 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

his experiences in his second letter, Jordanus says that 
while he was away from his four companions in this place, 
on a journey to Baroch, they were arrested and killed by 
the Saracens. This is very significant. For the time 
being, the Nestorians are living in the same place in peace 
and safety, because they keep themselves to themselves. 
But these Franks, these new-comers who are busy 
in trying to make converts, cannot be endured. So the 
missionaries are killed, while the Church is not molested. 
Can we have a plainer proof of the mournful fact that this 
Church had entirely lost the evangelistic zeal that had 
been the glory of her founders ? 

In his Mirabilia Jordanus describes his mission as 
being very successful in spite of trying persecutions and 
perilous adventures. His story reads like St. Paul's 
chapter of autobiography in the Second Epistle to the 
Corinthians. Four times he was cast into prison by the 
Saracens ; how many times he had his hair plucked out, 
was scourged, was stoned, " God Himself knoweth," he writes. 
In the year 1330, Pope John xxii. issued a bull to the 
Christians of Quilon, nominating Jordanus bishop of that 
place, and inviting the Nestorians to enter " the Christian 
Church." No doubt this earnest, active man left some 
lasting fruits of his heroic work. John de MarignoUi found 
a " Church of St. George " of the Latin communion in the 
year 1347. But the greatest activity of the Latin Church 
in India did not begin till a century later. This was of a 
very different spirit from Jordanus's Christ-like missionary 
enterprise. It was a Jesuit mission armed with the cruel 
weapons of the Inquisition. 



CHAPTER V 



LATER EASTERN CHRISTIAN [TY 

Marco Polo (trans, by Yule, 2nd edit.) ; Asseman, tome iv. ; Mosteim, 
Ecclesiastical History, vols. ii. and v. ; Coleridge, Life and Letters 
of St. Francis Xavier, 1902 ; Rae, Syrian Churches in India, 
1892 ; Brinkley, Chiiia (" Oriental Series," 1902) ; Broomhall, 
I%e Chinese Erfijpire, 1907. 

When Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, 
he enlarged the world of the Latin race and religion in 
a way almost comparable with the influences of Columbus's 
discovery of America on the Teutonic peoples and the 
scope of Protestantism. The rediscovery of the Old World 
was only second in importance to the discovery of the New 
World. In the fifteenth century the Turkish despotism 
sprawling over the wreck of the Byzantine Empire became 
a huge barrier between Asia and Europe, which shut off 
the West from intercourse with the East by the old 
overland road. What was then needed was the reverse 
of the policy of later Europe in its construction of the 
Suez Canal — a route to India that would avoid the 
Ottoman territory. Columbus had set out to find this 
route by circumnavigating the globe, when he stumbled on 
a new continent half-way round, and so surprised every- 
body by making a much more important discovery. Vasco 
de Gama attained the Genoese enthusiast's object in another 
and more effective way. He reached Asia by sailing round 
Africa. The immediate result was the establishment of 
the Portuguese dominions in India. 

The Portuguese on their arrival in India found a 
Christian Church oppressed by Mussulman tyranny, which 

523 



524 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

at once welcomed the advent of a Christian power, in the 
hope of securing its protection. Although the Syrian 
Church in India was Nestorian and the European new- 
comers were Eoman Catholics, for the moment no ecclesi- 
astical or doctrinal differences were noticed. It was 
enough that both were Christian for the two parties to 
draw together in presence of their common foe, the infidel. 
The friendship was mutual. The Portuguese were glad to 
find friends in a strange land, and the Syrian Christians 
were grateful for the prospect of shelter from the persecu- 
tion they were enduring under the Mohammedan rule, 
[n the year 1502 they presented a petition to Vasco de 
Gama begging him to put them under the protection of 
the King of Portugal, to whom, in sign of subjection, they 
sent the old sceptre of their former Christian kings, 
a silver-mounted rod with three little bells, and at 
the same time handed over the copper plates containing 
their charters to the Portuguese authorities. It was not 
a conquest ; it was a voluntary, eager, grateful action like 
that of the Jews welcoming Cyrus. These simple people 
little dreamed that what they took for an asylum was 
really a prison, that their deliverers were to become their 
gaolers. At first the wisdom of their course seemed to 
be amply justified. The most complete friendliness was 
established between the old inhabitants and the colonists. 
The Portuguese were freely admitted to the Syrian 
churches, and they attended amicably. It was only by 
degrees that the divergencies from Eoman belief and 
practice were noted and commented on. When a change 
of attitude on the part of the Portuguese was brought 
about, this was owing to the importation of the worst 
product of Spanish cruelty — the Inquisition, and that was 
due to the presence of the Jesuits. 

Nevertheless the Jesuits did not come in the first 
instance as inquisitors. Their expedition to India was 
undertaken with a positive and constructive end in view 
— not correction of error, repression, persecution ; but 
evangelisation, the spread of the Christian gospel among 



LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 



525 



Mussulman and heathen people, the extension of the Church 
in the East to make up for the large slice of territory of 
which the Eeformation had robbed her in the West. It 
was borne on a great wave of enthusiasm. Its leader was 
one of the most gifted, devoted, energetic, and successful 
missionaries the world has ever seen — Francis Xavier, the 
story of whose life belongs to the annals of the true saints. 

Francis Xavier was born in the year 1506, the 
youngest son of a nobleman high in the employ of the 
King of Aragon. While teaching philosophy at the 
university of Paris he met Ignatius Loyola, then in his 
early dreams of the counter-revolution, who gradually 
wrought the spell of his fascinating personality over a 
reluctant scholar, till at last Xavier yielded to it and became 
one of the seven who in the year 1534 took the first 
Jesuit vow. The company intended to go to Palestine in 
order to convert the Saracens, and they left Paris and 
travelled as far as Venice with that end in view. Their 
further journey being delayed, Ignatius set Xavier to work in 
hospital nursing. Then a war that broke out between the 
Venetian Eepublic and the Ottoman Empire compelled 
the Jesuits to abandon their design of attempting work in 
the Holy Land, and Xavier was now ordered to join Eodri- 
quez in an Indian mission. He reached Goa in May 1542, 
and there commenced his famous missionary career. Xavier 
found the Syrian Christians so dead to the evangelistic voca- 
tion of the Church, so absolutely exclusive and self-contained 
as a religious caste, keeping scrupulously aloof from their 
Mohammedan neighbours, that they regarded his efforts to 
convert these people with disapproval. For instance, he 
says that on one occasion, when he was about to baptise 
the child of a Mussulman, " the people of Socotra began to 
cry out that Mussulmans were unworthy of so great a 
blessing; that they would not let them be baptised, 
however much they deserved it, and that they would not 
permit any Mussulman to become a Christian." " Such," 
he adds, " is their hatred of Mussulmans." ^ 

* Coleridge, Life and. Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. i. p. 119, 



526 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Xavier's letters reveal the character of a man of 
sanguine temperament and affectionate nature, a Christian 
of deep, fervid devotion, true humility, and passionate 
earnestness for the winning of souls. His biographers 
surround his career with a halo of miracles ; yet in 
his letters he lays claim to no such performances, 
a silence which admirers ascribe to modesty. In the 
breviary office for his festival he is said to have en- 
joyed the miraculous gift of tongues ; but his letters 
show that he had to resort to an interpreter for com- 
municating with the native population. These letters 
bring us close to the real man, and help us to form a vivid 
picture of his labours. Xavier would go about through 
the streets ringing a bell and inviting the people — men, 
women, and children — to come and hear him preach. The 
following is his own account of his method : " I used to 
preach to the people promiscuously," he says, " in the 
morning, on Sundays, and on holy days. In the afternoon 
I expounded the articles of the creed to the natives, and 
the crowd of hearers was so great that the church could 
hardly contain them. I afterwards taught them the 
Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Apostles' Creed, and 
the Ten Commandments of the law of God. On Sundays 
I used to say mass for the lepers, whose hospital is close 
to the city, heard their confessions, etc."^ Xavier 
established a college at Goa to hold five hundred students, 
which was partly supported by the government. After 
his first five months in Goa he set out with three students 
on a missionary journey, of which he gives a full description 
in his letters to the Society at home. Travelling bare- 
footed, with a torn cassock and wearing a black stuff 
hat on his head, he visited the Paravas, a poverty-stricken 
people of low caste, with whom he spent fifteen months. 
Like our modern missionary he had found the Brahmin 
almost hopeless. Next he went to Travancore, which was 
partly heathen and partly Mohammedan ; yet there he 
tells us that village after village received him with joy. 

J Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier , vol. i. p. 120. 



LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 527 



Subsequently his tours extended to Ceylon — to Malacca — 
to the Molucca group — to Japan. At Kagoshuma, the 
most southerly small island of Japan, his converts were 
threatened with death. Moving on to the north he met 
with a better reception, though he found his ascetic ideal 
not so acceptable here as it had been in India. Still 
thirsting for more worlds to conquer for Christ and His 
Church, he projected a visit to China, and collected large 
sums of money for an extensive mission in the Celestial 
Empire, when he was stricken down with fever while 
on his way thither. He died at Sanchan, in the forty- 
seventh year of his age (a.d. 1552). The extraordinary 
amount of work accomplished by Xavier during so short 
a lifetime, and the passionate enthusiasm that was the 
inspiration of it, have enshrined his name in the hero-roll 
of the Church Universal. The story of his fruitful travel 
from country to country reads like an echo of the account 
of St. Paul's journeyings in the Acts of the Apostles. On 
the other hand, we must accept his glowing reports of his 
successes with caution. What, for instance, are we to 
think when we find him writing in one of his letters, 
" In the space of four months I made Christians of more 
than 10,000"?^ Either this is gross exaggeration, or the 
Christianity was very superficial, or we have a miracle 
that throws Pentecost into the shade. 

Now it was the great missionary Xavier who intro- 
duced the Inquisition into India. He did this in the 
burning earnestness of his zeal, not because he imagined 
that he could convert it into an engine for forcing the 
heathen into the Church — any such object was not in its 
province ; but because he desired to have certain impedi- 
ments to the growth and what he deemed the health of 
the Church removed out of its way. This institution was 
not invoked to plough up fallow ground ; it was demanded 
in order to remove rocks of offence. In a letter written 
towards the end of the year 1545, Xavier begged the 
King of Portugal to establish the Inquisition in order to 

^ Ihid. p. 280. 



528 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



check " the Jewish wickedness " that was spreading through 
his Eastern dominions. Fifteen years passed before the 
eager missionary's wish was granted. Xavier had died 
eight years before the terrible persecuting Spanish invention 
appeared on the field of his labours. Therefore he was 
not called upon to take part in its cruelty, and he must 
not be held responsible for the awful consequences of his 
mistake. In the year 1560 one of the four branches of 
the Inquisition was established at Goa. All the inquisitors 
were nominated by the King of Portugal, and their 
appointment was confirmed by the pope. Aiming primarily 
at the correction of Christians, it was also used against 
Jews, Mohammedans, and even heathen people. For, 
while the former were executed for heresy, many of the 
latter were punished for sorcery. The Inquisition at Goa 
was kept up till the year 1812, when it was abolished by 
a decree from the prince regent, Don Jose, at Eio Janeiro. 
Long before this it had done its worst in ruining the 
Portuguese Indian possessions. 

The attitude of the Church of Eome towards heresy 
was bound to have grave effects on the Syrian Church in 
India. In the year 1546 the Franciscans had set up a 
college at Crangamore with the purpose of training priests 
of the Eoman Catholic faith to become clergy in the 
Syrian Church. But it never came sufficiently into touch 
with the population. The Jesuits did better with their 
college at Vaipicotta, erected more than forty years later. 
Still, the Syrians held to their beliefs and customs. Mar 
Abraham, the catholicos, was accused on various charges 
by Aleixo Menezes, the papal "archbishop of Goa and 
primate of all the Indies." But he declined to submit to 
this alien authority. When he died, in the year 1597, 
his archdeacon, George, was appointed his successor in 
spite of the pope's prohibition. This man had informed 
Menezes that the Syrian Church had no connection with 
the pope of Eome. Here was material for a pretty quarrel. 
But the races of South India could not be expected to 
emulate Teutonic independence. The Syrian opposition to 



LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 



529 



Eome was crushed by the synod of Diaraper which met 
two years later (a.d. 1599). The differences between the 
two bodies were brought to a chmax at this synod, which 
was convened " for the increase of the Catholic faith among 
the Syrians in Malabar/' together with the extirpation of 
heresy and the establishment of union under the papacy. 
The papal party assumed that previous to the Nestorian 
schism in the fifth century the Syrian Church had been 
subject to Eome. The synod was to put an end to a 
separation which had lasted for more than a thousand years. 
Although the Syrians were invited, the synod was domi- 
nated by Eoman Catholic ecclesiastics, to whose decisions 
the native Christians were required to submit. It began 
by denouncing Nestorius and saluting Mary as the " mother 
of God." Then it substituted the Eoman saints' days for 
the Nestorian calendar, anathematised the catholicos of 
Babylon, established the authority of the pope, ordered 
moral reforms in the Church, licensed the J esuits to preach 
in the Syrian churches, commanded the celibacy of the 
clergy, and required married priests to dismiss their wives. 
One further consequence of the synod's decrees was the 
destruction of the old service books where these were not 
altered beyond recognition. Every book containing here- 
tical doctrine that could be found was burnt. In fact, no 
efforts were spared to bring this ancient Church into line 
with Eome and under the absolute authority of the pope. 
And the Syrian Christians submitted. One hundred and 
fifty-three priests and six hundred and sixty lay procurators 
signed the decrees of the synod. 

It was submission, but forced submission. For more 
than half a century the fires of discontent smouldered, and 
in the year 1653 they broke into open flames. A man 
named Atalla (i.e. Theodore), then ordained bishop by the 
catholicos of Babylon, and appointed by that supreme ecclesi- 
astic of the Syrian Church, had no sooner landed at Maila- 
pore than he was arrested by the Portuguese authorities, sent 
to Goa, and there deUvered over to the Inquisition. This 
treatment of their new bishop roused the Syrians to a 
34 



530 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



white heat of indignation. They gathered together in 
thousands round the Coonen cross in a village near Cochin, 
and took an oath renouncing the Portuguese bishops. 
Since their own Syrian bishop was a prisoner in the hands 
of the enemy, these people elected a substitute, Mar 
Thomas i., for the temporary government of the province. 
But the result was a split of the Syrian Church, one party 
adhering to the Papal Church as Eomo-Syrians, while the 
more daring spirits reverted to the Syrian usages. It is 
estimated that the former, known as Puthencoor, or the. 
new community, now number about 110,000, while the 
latter, the Palayacoor, or old community, amount to about 
330,000. 

Ten years later the Dutch obtained possession of 
Cochin. These new masters ordered foreign Eoman 
Catholic ecclesiastics out of their territory, and the Syrians 
continued to obtain their bishops from the catholicos of 
Babylon. But in the year 1665, G-regorius, the Jacobite 
metropolitan of Jerusalem, appeared among the Syrian 
Christians at Malabar. These people were at the time 
without a consecrated bishop, the communication with the 
catholicos having broken down. For twelve years they 
had been served by Mar Thomas, the bishop whom they 
had elected, but who had not received episcopal ordination. 
Gregorius now duly consecrated Thomas to his office, at 
the request of his flock, in spite of the fact that the metro- 
politan was a member of another communion which 
stood in relations of mutual excommunication to his 
Church. Gregorius remained in the country administering 
the affairs of the Church conjointly with Thomas. In this 
way the Nestorian Church in India passed under Jacobite 
rule — voluntarily, and apparently without any conscious- 
ness of the irregularity of its action. We could not 
have a plainer proof of the condition of indifference to 
theological dogmas to which it had arrived. So things 
went on till the end of the century, apparently giving rise to 
no confusion of teaching or clash of customs. The Church 
was ruled by a succession of Jacobite prelates, some of 



LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 



531 



whom attempted practical reforms, but apparently never 
exciting any theological interest in their own peculiar 
tenets. Evidently theology was dead in the Church, and 
the vitality of the Church itself was not very vigorous. 
But a silent current was flowing towards the Jacobite 
position. This is proved by what happened early in the 
eighteenth century, when Mar Gabriel, a Nestorian bishop, 
came to Malabar. Neither the metran (metropolitan) nor 
his people would acknowledge him or permit him to preach 
in the churches. But this inhibition may have been more 
due to his polemical airs than to any local objection to his 
heresy, for he was described as an implacable enemy of 
the Jacobites. He was able to detach a small following of 
Syrians whom he brought back to their old Nestorianism. 
In the year 1751 the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch sent 
out a number of copies of Jacobite liturgies, but only on 
one occasion, in the year 1770, was the metran ordained 
by the Jacobite patriarch. Thus those who are much 
concerned with the question of orders have grave doubts 
concerning the status of the priesthood of the Syrian 
Church in India. It would appear that in many cases, to 
say the least, ordination has been irregular. 

A new chapter in the history of this old Church opens 
with the introduction of English influences under the 
auspices of the Church Missionary Society. It was rightly 
seen that what the Nestorian Church most needed in the 
first instance was education, for the Syrian Christians, clergy 
as well as laity, were found to be sunk in gross ignorance. 
Accordingly in the year 1813a college was opened. The 
English missionaries were disposed to hope that if the 
Eoman corruptions could be removed the Syrian Church 
would return to its pristine simplicity. But longer experi- 
ence showed them that their task of restoring evangelical 
Christianity would require a more radical reformation. At 
first the native metrans welcomed the co-operation of the 
missionaries ; but later on a hostile spirit was manifested 
towards the foreign intruders. A mistake was made by 
Bishop Heber at Bombay in highly honouring the 



532 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

bishop, who had been sent to Malabar by the Jacobite 
patriarch of Antioch to supersede the native metran, but 
who turned out to be a very undesirable personage. In 
the year 1835, Bishop Wilson held a conference with the 
Syrian clergy, and gave them some excellent advice on the 
need of ministerial training, the establishment of schools, 
the use of the vernacular in the prayers, instruction in the 
Gospels, and other improvements, in which they appeared 
to acquiesce, but which they entirely repudiated as soon as 
he had left them, even sending him back the 1,000 rupees 
he had given them. Perhaps something may be said for 
the Syrian side of the case. Excellent as was the good 
bishop's advice, he had come on a tour of inspection as 
the first " Metropolitan of British India." We can under- 
stand with what feelings the leaders of an ancient Church, 
proud of a history they dated back to the Apostolic Age, 
would regard a visit from this English clergyman with his 
high-sounding title, especially if we allow that Bishop 
Wilson was — as it is asserted — not deficient in British 
masterfulness. 

After this the Syrian Church broke off relations with the 
Church Missionary Society. A little later. Mar Athanasius 
Mathew, a native of Malabar, became metran. This good 
man worked for years for the reform of his Church, in spite 
of local opposition and rivalry. His position was rather 
ambiguous, because, after priding himself on having been 
consecrated by the patriarch of Antioch, he denied that 
prelate's authority to depose him. After his death the 
question of the succession to the bishopric came into the 
law courts and gave rise to ten years of litigation. This 
question turned mainly on the right of the Jacobite 
patriarch of Antioch to supremacy over the Syrian Church 
in India. In point of fact, he had only ordained one metran 
accepted by that Church, Mar Athanasius, during the whole 
Jacobite period. The opposing party based their claim 
for independence on the earlier history of the Church when 
it was in communion with the Nestorian catholicos at Baby- 
lon and derived its orders from him, as well as on its own 



LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 



533 



habitual autonomy. But the judicial decision handed the 
see over to the Jacobite nominee, Mar Dionysius Joseph. 

While there is little sign of progress in the Syrian Church 
as an organisation, many young men from this communion go 
to study at Madras University. Therefore, perhaps, these 
educated Christians of St. Thomas will come in time to 
insist on the introduction of more enlightened methods in 
the conduct of their Church, such as the extension of 
education and the higher training of the clergy ; but that 
will only be the case if they remain loyal to the faith and 
Church of their fathers after passing through the mill of 
Western culture. 

The Syrian churches which may be seen in South 
India to-day are constructed with Saracenic arches, sloping 
roofs, and buttressed walls. For the most part they are 
red in hue, and are built of stones squared and polished in 
the quarries. They have bells cast in native founderies. 
The traveller off the lines of modern missions may be 
startled to hear the sound of church bells among the hills, 
indicating the neighbourhood of some old church of the 
Syrian Christians. 

Lastly, we have traces of Syrian Christianity in China. 
Its origin has not been discovered, and some have doubted its 
ever having existed. But there is clear evidence that the 
early Nestorian missionaries or their successors penetrated 
into the interior of the Celestial Empire. In the year 
1625 the Jesuits found a marble tablet, 7 J ft. high and 
nearly 4 ft. broad, buried under some ruins at Singanfu, 
a large city on the Yellow Eiver, formerly the capital of 
the empire. This tablet is entitled " A monument com- 
memorating the introduction and propagation of the noble 
law of Ta t'sin in the middle kingdom." In the upper 
part there is an incised cross, beneath which is an inscrip- 
tion in Syriac and Chinese, first setting forth a vague 
abstract of Christian doctrine, and then recording the chief 
events of a Syrian mission in China. It tells how a mis- 
sionary named Olopan came from Judaea to China in the 
year 636, having escaped great dangers by sea and land, 



534 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



and was met by an official of the emperor and lodged in 
the imperial palace, where his law was examined, with the 
result that its truth was acknowledged. Thereupon, accord- 
ing to the inscription, the emperor issued an edict in favour 
of Christianity, ordered a church to be built, and nominated 
twenty-one persons to serve it. So much for the begin- 
nings. Then follows a chronicle of the mission from the 
year 636 to the year 780 (in the inscription 1092 of the 
Greek era). At first there was success, and the Christians 
prospered unmolested. This went on for two generations. 
In the year 699 there came a change, and the Church 
was persecuted ; a second persecution broke out fourteen 
years later, after which the Christian again entered on a 
happy time. This was under the Emperor Hinem-cum. 
At a later time a second mission appeared, in consequence 
of which many churches were built, and Christianity was 
patronised by a succession of emperors. The tablet also 
contains a list of clergy.^ 

The antiquity and genuineness of this tablet are not 
altogether above suspicion. It might be expected that 
if so great progress had been made in early times, more 
indications of it would be apparent in the present day. 
The account of the notice taken of this mission by the 
emperors and their active patronage and assistance is 
certainly remarkable ; it calls for confirmation that is not 
forthcoming. Accordingly some have held that the whole 
thing is an impudent fraud of the Jesuits.^ That, however, 
is highly improbable. What motive would these zealous 
proselytes of the papal party have had for producing false 
evidence in favour of the venerable antiquity and former 
high status of the Syrian Church ? ^ Besides, we have 
other evidence of the existence of Christianity in China 
not far from the times of the tablet. 

The canon of Theodore, bishop of Edessa in the year 

* There is a facsimile of this tablet in Yule's Marco Polo, vol. 1. p. 21. 

* Renan was very dubious about it. See Hist. Lang. Semit. p. 202. 

* See Mosheim, Church Hist. vol. ii. pp. 151, 152, notes a, 6, for a 
learned discussion of this question. 



LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 



535 



800, refers to "Metropolitans of China, India, and Persia, 
of the Merozites of Siam, of the Eaziches, of the Harinos, of 
Samarcand, which are distant and which by reason of the 
infested mountains and turbulent sea are prevented from 
attending the four yearly convocations with the catholicos, 
and who therefore are to send their reports every six 
years." 

In the year 845 the Emperor Wu Tsung condemned 
4,600 Buddhist monasteries to be destroyed, and afc the same 
time ordered three hundred foreign priests " to return to 
the secular life, that the customs of the empire might be 
uniform." ^ 

Further, two Arab travellers of the same century have 
left accounts of their discoveries of Christianity in China. 
One of them, Ebn Wahab, describes his conversation with 
the emperor about the contents of the Old and New Testa- 
ment. Another indication of ancient Syrian Christianity 
in China is to be seen in the discovery in the year 1725 
of a Syrian manuscript containing large portions of the 
Old Testament and a collection of hymns which was in the 
possession of a Chinaman.^ 

In the tenth century — so dark in Western Europe — 
the Nestorians introduced Christianity into Tartary proper. 
Three centuries later (a.d. 1274), Marco Polo says 
that he has seen two churches in the city of Cingianfu 
built by Nestorians. He states that " the Great Khan sent 
a baron of his whose name was Mar Sarghis [ ? Sergius], a 
Nestorian Christian, to be governor of this city for three 
years. The two churches were built during that time." ^ 
A little further on Marco Polo tells us of some people 
called Alans who were Christians, but who lost a city they 
had captured by their drunkenness.* 

The legend of Prester John, so widespread and so long 
enduring in the East, wild and fantastic as it has become, 
is based on the idea of the conversion of a Mongol 

^ Du Halde, China, vol. i. p. 518, quoted in Broomhall, The Chinese 
Empire, p. 6. 

2 Ibid. » Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii. p. 162. * lUd. p. 163. 



536 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



tribe called Karith, living on the confines of China. The 
hero of the legend is said to have been the king of this 
people, and to have lived at Kara-Korum, a city on the 
Orchar about six hundred miles west of Pekin. His original 
name and title were Ung or Avenk Khan; but coming 
under the Christian influences of the Syrians he was 
converted, and then he received his baptismal name and 
title, Malek Juchana, i.e. King John. His niece, who also 
became a Christian, was said to have been married to Tuli, 
the son of Genghis Khan. If the story is correct, like 
Bertha of Canterbury, she introduced the faith of Christ to 
her pagan husband's court, with the result that a succession 
of kings of the tribe of Karith professed Christianity.^ 

In the year 1145 the Syrian bishop of Gabala (Jihal, 
in Laodicea of Syria), coming to Europe to lay his griev- 
ances before Pope Eugenius ill., reported that not long 
before, a certain John, living in the Far East, a king and 
Nestorian priest, claiming descent from the three wise 
kings, had made war on the Samiard king of the Modes 
and Persians, and had taken Ecbatana their capital. Pro- 
ceeding to deliver Jerusalem, he was stopped by the Tigris 
and by the sickness of his army.^ The probability is that 
this story refers to a raid by some Armenian prince. The 
Crusading project of rescuing Jerusalem and the stoppage of 
it at the Tigris do not point to China. 

Great as was the fame of the mysterious John, possibly 
attached to more than one real or mythical person in 
more than one locality, it was not undisputed. For 
example, Friar William of Eubruch, who preceded Marco 
Polo by a few years, and travelled in these Eastern parts 
during the years 1253 to 1255, when referring to a famous 
Mongolian chieftain, says, "The Nestorians used to call 
him King John, and to say of him ten times more than 
was true, for this is the way of the Nestorians who come 
from these parts. Out of nothing they will make a great 
story, and so great reports went out concerning this King 

1 See Asseman, tome iv. p. 494 ; Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 234 flf. 
^ Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 228, note ff. 



LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 



537 



John ; though when I went through his pasture lands no 
one knew anything of him save a few Nestorians." ^ 

Friar William's unkind remarks about the Nestorians 
are not quite fair. It was not they who invented the 
legend. The true origin of it is to be found in the West, 
where it grew up out of vague reports of distant Oriental 
travel, and whence it was transported to the region inhabited 
by the Nestorians, who no doubt were glad to welcome so 
flattering a story and not reluctant to make the most of it. 

Eoman Catholicism was introduced into Tartary and 
China in the thirteenth century, when Pope Nicholas iv. 
sent John de Monte Corvino to the court of Kublai Khan, the 
founder of the Yuen or Mongol dynasty in China. Cut off 
from communication with Europe, this missionary laboured 
till his death at the age of seventy-eight (a.d. 1307), and left 
behind him a translation of the whole New Testament and the 
Psalter in the language of the Tartars. There are existing 
letters in which — if they are genuine — Kublai Khan requests 
the pope to send one hundred missionaries to his country. 
Troubles in the papacy at home put a stop to the promising 
missionary enterprise. In the sixteenth century the 
Jesuit mission to China projected by Xavier was carried 
out by Father Eicci, who established himself at Shacking 
and cleverly worked his way on to Pekin, founding missions 
by the way at Nauchang Fu, Suchow Fu, and Nanking Fu. 
He died in 1610. In 1631 Dominican and Franciscan 
missionaries arrived in China, and a bitter controversy 
with the Jesuits was the consequence. Trouble also came 
from the break-up of the Ming dynasty and the rise of 
the present Manchu power. 

By the year 1637, the Jesuits had published 340 
treatises on religion, philosophy, and mathematics in the 
Chinese language. These energetic servants of the Church 
and the papacy have been accused of being remarkably 
accommodating in adapting the beliefs and requirements 
of Christianity to Chinese ideas and customs. They even 
succeeded in winning over Chung-chi, who became the 

* Hakluyt Soc, SeQond Series, iv., 1900. 



538 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

first Christian emperor of the Mongolian race. On his 
death the mandarins, holding the reins of government 
during the youth of his son, turned against the Jesuits, of 
whose privileges they had become very jealous, and com- 
menced a persecution (a.d. 1664). The chief of the 
Jesuits, John Adam Schaal, then an old man, who had 
held an honourable place at court, was flung into prison 
and ultimately executed, while the other missionaries were 
driven into exile. About five years later, the young heir, 
Kang-hsi, assumed the government and at once reversed 
this policy of the regency, and recalled the Jesuits. The 
new emperor proved to be a man of noble and generous 
spirit. He valued the Jesuits so greatly that he sent to 
Europe for more of the order, and set these men in the 
highest positions in the State. Thus the awakening of 
China under the influence of Europe which we are witness- 
ing to-day seemed to be promised more than two hundred 
years ago. 

The famous Emperor Kang-hsi continued to favour the 
Jesuits during the whole of his long reign of sixty years, 
and built them their magnificent church at Pekin. At 
the death of this emperor in the year 1722, the imperial 
favour ceased, and the Jesuit influence decHned. But the 
Koman Catholics have ever since claimed a political status 
in the empire. 

Protestant missions in China were begun in the year 
1807 by Dr. Morrison. In the year 1907 there were 
3,719 Protestant missionaries in the empire, with 9,998 
native helpers, 154,142 communicants, 706 stations and 
3,794 out-stations, 366 hospitals and dispensaries, 2,139 
day schools, 42,73 8 pupils, 255 boarding and higher schools, 
containing 10,227 pupils.^ 

* Broomhall, p. 40. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 

(a) Langlois, Collection des Historiens Anciens et Modernes de 

VArmenie, including Agathangelos, Moses of Chorene, "the 
Herodotus of Armenia " (5th century), etc. ; Vartabet 
Matthew, Life of St. Gregory the Illuminator {tr-dns.hy Malan) ; 
The Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Church (trans, by Malan) ; 
Vitce Sarictorum Calemlarii Armeniaici (12 vols. pub. Venice, 
1814) ; Asseman ii. ; Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. i. 

(b) Fortescue, The Armenian Church, 1872 ; Issaverdenz, Armenia 

and the Armenians (2nd edit., 1875-78) ; Tozer, Turkish 
Armenia, 1881 ; Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat (4th edit., 
1896) ; Lepsius, Armenia and Europe, 1897 ; Lynch, Armenia, 
1901. 

Armenia is a name used for a country of indefinite and vary- 
ing extent, centred at the southern slopes of the Caucasus 
and the high table-land which is a western projection of 
the plain of Iram, and which culminates in Mount Ararat. 
At the time of the Eomans it was divided into Armenia 
Minor, west of the Euphrates, and. Armenia Major, east of 
that river. Situated at the meeting point of vast and am- 
bitious empires, Armenia has been tossed to and fro between 
them as the repeated victim of their shifting fortunes. 
After having been conquered by Alexander the Great and 
then placed under Macedonian supremacy, Armenia obtained 
a partial independence from the Eomans, who set up 
a kingdom there, not attempting to incorporate it in their 
empire. But Parthia and Persia in turn seized hold of the 
country, which came to be divided between the Byzantine 
and Persian powers, with different degrees of autonomy in 
successive ages, until the Mongolian invasions swept over 

539 



540 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

it and at last the Mohammedan conquests brought the 
greater part of it under the sway of Islam. The Armenians, 
who are now largely scattered over Asia Minor and con- 
siderably represented at Constantinople, are an ancient, 
distinct race of the Indo-Germanic family with marked 
characteristics, among which is a keen business ability, that 
has enabled them to attain to wealth where it has been 
possible for them to do so, in face of oppression and 
persecution. They were neither Hellenised under the 
Byzantine Empire nor Latinised under the Eoman. They 
have retained their own language and national character- 
istics in spite of the terrible series of destructive tyrannies 
to which they have been subject. In this respect, and in the 
hatred their commercial superiority has aroused, we may 
compare them to the Jews, whom they thus resemble 
more than any other race. 

It is usual to divide the history of the Armenian 
Church into three periods — (1) a.d. 34—302, begin- 
ning with the legendary mission of Thaddseus to King 
Abgar, together with supposed visits of Bartholomew, 
Simon, and Jude ; ^ (2) A.D. 302—491, from the mission of 
Gregory the Illuminator to the breach with the orthodox 
Church owing to rejection of the decrees of Chalcedon; 
(3) A.D. 491 to the present time, when the Church of 
Armenia has been entirely independent of Constantinople 
and doctrinally severed from the Greek Church. But the 
first of these periods is mythical ; we have no clear evidence 
of any Christianity existing in Armenia previous to the 
fourth century, when Gregory Illuminator, the apostle of 
the Armenians, introduced the gospel to these people. 

Gregory, who is surnamed " The Illuminator," because 
" Illumination " is the technical Armenian word for 
conversion, was born about the year 257, at Valarshabad 
(now represented by Etchmiadzim), the capital of the 
province of Ararat in Armenia. At the instigation of the 
Sassanid Sapor i. his father assassinated Chosroes i., the King 
of Armenia, for which act the dying king ordered the whole 

^ See Lynch, Armenia, vol. i. p. 277, note 2. 



THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 



541 



family to be slain; but Gregory, tben a young infant, was 
saved and carried off to Ciiesarea in Cappadocia, wbere he 
was brought up as a Christian. Subsequently he became 
an attendant of Tiridates IIL, the King of Armenia, who 
raised him to the rank of a noble. But, being true to his 
Christian faith, he angered his royal master by refusing to 
take part in a heathen sacrifice. " The twelve tortures 
of St. Gregory " are a series of torments with which the 
saint is said to have been punished for his disobedience. 
Unfortunately his contemporary biography has been so 
embroidered with legendary decorations that it is im- 
possible to disentangle it from these later materials. We 
see Tiridates transformed into a wild boar for murder- 
ing a nun who is a member of a religious community 
that has taken refuge in Armenia in order to escape the 
Diocletian persecution, and who has refused his advances 
and got away from his palace after having been carried off 
for the royal harem. It is revealed to the king's sister 
that he can be restored if Gregory is brought up from the 
pit where he has been confined. This is done ; whereupon 
Gregory brings back Tiridates to his human form, and cures 
the people who have been smitten with the plague. The 
saint is now encouraged to preach the gospel to the delighted 
king and nation, and he does so with very great effect.^ 
After this we are compelled to be doubtful as to other 
details in the story, such as the statement of the large 
number of churches that Gregory built. Still, there is no 
question that the Illuminator was a successful missionary 
in Armenia, nor that from his time Christianity was the 
recognised rehgion of the State. This was before Constan- 
tino had adopted Christianity. Thus Armenia was the 
first country to receive and acknowledge Christianity as its 
national religion. 

Gregory was consecrated bishop of Armenia by Leontius, 
the bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Taking the year of 
his release from the pit as A.D. 300, Mr. Malan assigns his 
consecration to the year 302. But as the earliest notice 

^ Agathangelos, 89. 



542 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



of Leontius as bishop of Csesarea is in the year 314 when 
he signed the canons of the councils of Ancyra and Neo- 
csesarea, this may be a little too early. The connection 
between Armenia and the Cappadocian Csesarea was kept 
up for a hundred years, after which it was broken by the 
Persian advance. St. Gregory is said to have exercised 
the functions of bishop for about thirty years, and then to 
have retired to a solitary life among the caves of Manyea, 
where he only lived for a twelvemonth, and died in the year 
332. The tradition of his visit to Constantine with his 
sovereign, which subsequently grew into a splendid journey 
to Eome and reception by Pope Sylvester, is purely 
legendary and evidently false.^ Gregory was succeeded in 
turn by his two sons, Eostaces and Bartanes, after whom 
in succession came two sons of Eostaces. Thus we see 
Gregory's personal and family influence long dominating 
the Church of which he was the founder. It must have 
been about the time of the last of these descendants 
of Gregory the Illuminator that Julian, when about to set 
out on his ill-fated Persian expedition, sent an insulting 
letuer to Arsacius, King of Armenia, claiming his alliance 
and co-operation, and warning him that unless he acted 
according to the emperor's directions, his God in whom he 
trusted would not be able to deliver him from the 
vengeance of Eome.^ 

Towards the end of the fourth century Armenia had a 
famous bishop, or rather catholicos, as the head of the 
Armenian Church was now called, who was in ofiice for 
thirty - four years. This was Norseses I. He too was 
related to Gregory the Illuminator. Norseses was present 
at the council of Constantinople (a.d. 381); he was put 
to death by Pharme, the King of Armenia.^ 

The original Armenian version of the Bible was made 
about the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth 
centuries by Mesrob, a scholar from Edessa, with the help 
of a Greek scribe named Hrofanos — whom Scrivener 

1 Niceph. Callist. H. E. viii. 35 ; Moses of Chorene, 89. 
Sozonien, Hid. Eecl. vi. 1. ' Le Qnien, vol. i. 1375. 



THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 



543 



supposes to have been Rufinus — and two pupils named 
John and Joseph ; it was based on the Greek text, and began 
with the Book of Proverbs. Near about the same time 
the Bible, or part of it, was also translated by St. Sahak, 
i.e. Isaac, who, however, only worked on a Syriac text. The 
present Armenian version appears to be a recension made 
shortly after the council of Ephesus.^ There can be no 
doubt that the early possession of the Scriptures in the 
vernacular helped to enlighten and consolidate the Armenian 
Church and to fortify it for the trials it was called upon to 
endure. 

After the murder of Norseses, the metropolitan of 
Caesarea refused to allow his three successors to ordain. 
Isaac, the translator of the Bible, was the first to be em- 
powered to resume this function, and he held office for 
forty years, during which time the native dynasty was 
overthrown by the Persians. The Armenian liturgy dates 
from the time of Isaac, which may be regarded as the 
golden age of Armenian literature. Then a cloud of 
troubles burst on the Church. In the year 440, Isaac was 
deposed by the Persians, who set a succession of their own 
nominees in his place. 

We now approach the events that severed the 
Armenians from the main body of the Church in the 
East. They refused to accept the decrees of the council 
of Chalcedon (a.d. 451). Dr. Neale maintains that this 
was not because they sympathised with the Eutychian 
doctrine, but because they misunderstood the council's 
position and supposed it to favour Nestorianism. That 
may have been the case at the time, but it will not serve 
as a defence of Armenian orthodoxy in perpetuity. Nine 
years later, the archimandrite Barsumas, the leader of the 
turbulent band of monks who had violently attacked the 
opponents of Eutyches at the " Bobber Council," and a 
staunch supporter of Eutychianism, sent his disciple Samuel 
into Armenia to confirm the Church of that country in its 

^ Scrivener, Introduction to the Criticism of the New Test., 4th edit, 
pp. 148-154. 



544 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



rejection of the council of Chalcedon. Thus Samuel 
became the propagandist of Monophysitism in the Armenian 
Church, and therefore, even if its attitude in disapproving of 
the fourth oecumenical council may have been at first due to 
a misapprehension, from the time of Barsumas's interference 
it was definitely drilled into the Monophysite doctrine. No 
doubt it was at a disadvantage in only having the views 
of the two extremists. The Armenians saw Nestorianism 
among their Syrian neighbours and rejected it ; they were 
offered Monophysitism as its distinct opposite ; but, unlike 
the Greek and Latin Churches, they did not have the via 
media of Catholic doctrine presented to them in its antagon- 
ism to both extremes. Under such circumstances it would 
have been a miracle if they had not become Monophysites. 
Still, forty years passed before there was any breach with 
the orthodox Church. This took place in the year 491, 
when the Armenian National Council assembled at Vagar- 
shiabad formally anathematised the council of Chalcedon. 
From that time onwards the national Church of Armenia 
— now known as the Gregorian Church, after the name of 
its famous founder — has stood apart from the Greek 
Church, remaining in isolation down to the present day, in 
spite of repeated attempts at reunion. 

In the year 535 there was held the famous council 
of Tiben, which anathematised the orthodox Church of 
Jerusalem and added the Monophysite clause, " who was 
crucified for us," to the Trisagion, at the same time 
confirming the union of the feasts of the Nativity and 
Epiphany (or baptism of Christ) in opposition to Catholic 
usage. So important has this council been reckoned in 
Armenia, that the national calendar has been dated from 
it — though starting with a wrong year — A.D. 531, four 
years too early.^ 

Towards the end of the sixth century there was a 
temporary schism resulting from an attempt on the part of 
the Eoman Emperor Maurice to bring back the Armenians 
to the orthodox fold. The Armenian monarch, Chosroes IL, 
^ Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. i. 1383. 



THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 



545 



owed his throne to Maurice, who thus acquired para- 
mount influence in Armenia. Chosroes even gave him the 
province which had been under the Persian dominion. 
In this way Tiben, where the cathohcos then resided, 
was transferred to the Eoman Empire. It was natural, 
therefore, that an orthodox emperor, accustomed to rule 
over the Church in his dominions, should expect the 
Armenians to come into line with the rest of his subjects. 
But Moses 11., who was Armenian patriarch at the time, 
declined to change his creed at the bidding of a Greek 
despot, and refused to communicate with those bishops of 
the transferred province of Taron who had given in their 
submission after a conference at Constantinople. Then 
Maurice appointed a rival catholicos, John of Cocosta. On 
the death of Moses, his successor, Abraham of Arastune, 
summoned a council of bishops, presbyters, and archiman- 
drites, which decreed that all who refused to anathematise 
the council of Chalcedon should be banished from the 
country. This led to a formal secession from the Church 
by John and his party. 

In the year 632 the Emperor Herachus assembled a 
council of Greeks and Armenians at Carana (the modern 
Erzeroum), which after a month's discussion came to an 
agreement in anathematising the decisions of Tiben and 
accepting the Chalcedonian position. The one champion of 
Armenian orthodoxy was John Maracumensis, who was a 
candidate for the post of catholicos. He was condemned at 
this council to banishment, condemned again at a second 
council, branded on the forehead with the figure of a fox 
by the prsetor of Eoman Armenia, and driven away to 
Mount Caucasus. But he had his disciples who cherished 
the seed of the old Armenian faith, and who eventually 
succeeded in restoring it in the national Church. Then 
came the Mohammedan conquest. But again the country 
was forced to a nominal acceptance of Greek orthodoxy, 
when Justinian n. temporarily recovered Armenia to 
Christendom, and the catholicos Isaac ni. and his bishops 
were summoned to Constantinople, where they were induced 
35 



546 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

to give in their adherence to the creed of Chalcedon (a.d. 
6 8 9). On their return home this act of weakness was repudi- 
ated by their Church, and the reconquest of Armenia by the 
Saracens enabled the National Church to revert to its old 
position. This was confirmed in a famous synod summoned 
by the command of the General Omar at Manaschiertum on 
the confines of Hyrcania in the year 715. It was politic for 
the Saracens to promote an ecclesiastical schism that divided 
their Christian subjects from the Byzantine Empire. At 
this synod there were six Jacobite Syrian bishops ; and it 
resulted in the fusion of the two communions on the basis 
of the Monophysite doctrine, except that the Julianists,^ 
who were well represented in Armenia, held aloof. After 
this the affairs of the Armenian Church pass into obscurity. 

Even in spite of the rejection of the decrees of Chalcedon 
the severance of the Armenian from the Greek Church was 
gradual, fluctuating, and long indefinite. This is proved by 
the fact that there were Armenian bishops at the three 
succeeding oecumenical councils — II. Constantinople (a.d. 
553); III. Constantinople (a.d. 680); and even 11. Mcsea 
(a.d. 788) — and that the decrees of those councils were 
acknowledged in Armenia. As late as the year 1166 
the catholicos Narses, writing to the Emperor Manuel 
Comnenus, distinctly repudiated the Eutychian heresy. 
But then he did not accept the Chalcedonian definition. 
The position assumed by his Church all along when not 
disturbed by foreign influences was that its doctrine was 
ancient primitive Christianity, not Eutychian nor any other 
peculiar theology, and that the council of Chalcedon had 
been false to that teaching in leaning towards Nestorianism. 

During the mediaeval period the Armenians were 
not represented by any conspicuous ecclesiastic or theo- 
logian, and yet the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh 
centuries all contributed some works to Armenian litera- 
ture. Turks and Byzantines now made Armenia theii' 
])attlefield, and the miserable people suffered only less from 
the latter than from the former. For three centuries the 

1 See p. 120. 



THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 



547 



country was swept by nomadic tribes, and can scarcely be 
said to have had a national existence. The devastating 
rush of Timour came with fatal force over Armenia. The 
peasants were driven from the plains, and the whole 
population reduced to the depths of poverty and misery. 
Many hid in the mountains. Not a few in despair 
accepted Islam and intermarried with Kurds. Others 
escaped to Cihcia and Cappadocia, and there became the 
nucleus of the Christian kingdom of Lesser Armenia, which 
contrived to exist in independence, though ringed round with 
Moslem provinces and not in alliance with the Byzantine 
Empire. These Western Armenians joined hands with the 
Crusaders, and when communications with Europe were 
reopened began to develop the remarkable commercial 
genius for which the race has been famous all around the 
Mediterranean down to our own day. Unfortunately this 
same facility of communication with Europe opened the 
way for papal aggressiveness. In the year 1335 there 
was formed an Armenian Uniat Society, which accepted 
the Eoman Catholic form of Christianity. At the council 
of Florence (a.d. 1439) this body was designated "the 
United Armenian Church." Subsequently it suffered some 
persecution from the national Church of Armenia and its 
patriarch. 

The well known monastery of the Mechitaristes on the 
island of St. Lazaar near Venice belongs to the Uniat 
Armenian Church. It is named after its founder Mechitar, 
who was born at Sebaste in Asia Minor in the year 1676, 
and who entered an Armenian convent at Erzeroum in 
1691, but afterwards obtained permission to study at 
Etchmiadzin. Finding that he could learn little there, he 
got further permission to go to Eome ; but owing to illness 
was only able to proceed as far as Constantinople, where 
he fell in with some able Eoman Catholic ecclesiastics, 
under whose influence he joined their Church. Subse- 
quently he founded an order of Armenian monks under 
a modified Benedictine rule, which was sanctioned by Pope 
Clement XL, who made Mechitar the head of the order 



548 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

with the title of abbot. This was at Modan in the Morea, 
then under Venetian rule. The conquest of the peninsula 
by the Turks led Mechitar and his monks to migrate in the 
year 1715 to Venice, where the Senate granted them the 
island of St. Lazaar. This monastery became an important 
centre of scholarship, and the monks devoted themselves to 
the spread of Armenian literature and education. The 
Coenobite Armenian monks of the national Church follow a 
form of the rule of St. Basil ; those who live a hermit life 
belong to an order of St. Anthony. 

When Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks 
(a.d. 1453), the Armenian bishop of Brusa was appointed 
patriarch by Mohammed il., and put under the patronage and 
control of the Ottoman government in a similar way to 
that in which the Greek patriarch was treated. He became 
the poHtical head of his nation, and through his bishops he 
was made responsible for the government of his people, 
with authority in civil as well as in religious matters. 
For this purpose the Christian population was divided into 
communities called millets. The patriarch was supported 
by a council of bishops and clergy, and each bishop was set 
over his own province. The result was the same as among 
the Greeks. The Church was degraded by being made 
subject to chief clergy who were also officials of the Turkish 
government, and slavish sycophancy prevailed among these 
officials themselves. Still, the Armenians gained something 
in having a legal constitution under guardians of their own 
nationality. At first this only applied to the Western 
Armenians, who had been involved in the fall of the 
Byzantine Empire ; but in the year 1514 the Osmanli 
Turks under Selim I. conquered Armenia proper, and Idris 
the historian, a Kurd from Biltis, was then entrusted with 
the task of organising the province. In order to hold the 
district effectually, he transplanted into it a number of 
people of his own nationality. Thus from this time 
onwards the population of Armenia has been mixed, con- 
sisting mainly of the two races — Armenians and Kurds. 
Therefoj'e, while on the one hand many Armenians have 



THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 



549 



left their country because of its successive troubles and 
settled in Asia Minor, Constantinople, and other Western 
places, after the manner of the J ewish " dispersion," in the 
present day the land is largely stocked with a rude, alien, 
Mohammedan race, inferior to the original inhabitants both 
in civilisation and in morals. The two races have never 
coalesced. Eeligious more than racial differences have kept 
them apart. This fact should be borne in mind when we 
consider the Armenian problem. Armenia is no longer a 
geographical term in any national sense ; it represents a 
persecuted people, almost living as outlaws both in their 
own original land and in many other places, chiefly Turkish, 
Eussian, and Persian. 

In the year 1603 the catholicos Melchizedic called in 
the aid of the Persian Shah Abbas to deliver his people 
from Turkish oppression ; but after over-running the land 
the shah transported many of the Armenians by force into 
his own country, where he concentrated them in a colony 
near Ispahan. For two centuries after this Armenia was 
trampled on alternately by contending Turkish and Persian 
armies. The Church was also suffering degradation from 
the sale of the office of cathoKcos. There was a dispute 
between the Armenian patriarchs at Constantinople and 
Jerusalem and the catholicos as to the supremacy of 
the latter. In the year 1655, PhiKp, an able man, only 
second to St. Isaac of the patristic period as a great 
ecclesiastic, consolidated the Church by inducing the two 
patriarchs to submit to him as catholicos of all the 
Armenian Christians. But now the Armenians were dis- 
turbed by Jesuit missionaries, and the office of catholicos 
again fell into unworthy hands, so that during the first 
half of the eighteenth century the Church was in a 
deplorable condition. This was the time of the catholicos 
Lazar, who left behind him an ill name. But in the time 
of Simon, who came into office in the year 1763, things 
began to improve under Eussian influences. 

Eussia acquired Georgia in the year 1801; and in 
1828 she took possession of part of Armenia, including the 



550 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

ecclesiastical capital, Etchmiadzin, with the result that the 
catholicos of the Armenian Church became a Eussian 
citizen. Henceforth that ecclesiastic was responsible to 
the tsar, though still elected by his own bishops. His 
powers were now limited by a synod, after the Eussian 
pattern. 

Protestant and evangelistic work was commenced in 
Armenia in the year 1831 by American missionaries. In 
1846 the catholicos anathematised all Armenians who 
accepted Protestant notions, with the result that a separate 
Protestant Church was founded as the " Evangelical Church 
of the Armenians." In spite of opposition from France 
and Eussia, the British ambassador succeeded in getting 
this recognised officially as a millet. The American 
missionaries founded Armenian colleges on the Bosphorus, 
at Kharput, Marsivan, and Aintab. 

Meanwhile the greater part of the Armenian nation 
still remaining under the Ottoman government suffered 
continuously from its ruinous extortion and recurrent acts 
of violence. Consular reports have poured in an unbroken 
stream of information as to the outrages perpetrated by 
the Kurds at the instigation of the Ottoman rulers. By 
the treaty of San Stephano, Turkey promised Eussia to 
carry out reforms "in the provinces inhabited by the 
Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the 
Kurds and the Circassians." But on the insistence of Lord 
Beaconsfield the treaty of Berlin (1878) abrogated the 
Eussian protectorate of the Armenian Christians, and 
conferred it on the six signatory powers, to whom Turkey 
gave the pledge of reforms in Armenia. In the same year, 
by the Cyprus Convention, the sultan promised Great 
Britain to introduce necessary reforms " for the protection 
of the Christians and other subjects of the Porte " in the 
Turkish Asiatic territories. Thus first the protection of 
the Armenians was granted to and accepted by Eussia ; 
then it was taken from Eussia and assumed by Europe, 
but with an additional responsibility assumed by England 
in obtaining her own special pledge from the sultan. All 



THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 



551 



this has been a dead letter. No reforms have been carried 
out. No compulsion has been put on the Turks to have 
the sultan's pledges fulfilled. It is true that in 1880 
identical notes were presented to the Porte by the powers, 
and that in 1881 the British ministry sent a circular note 
to the five other signatory powers in the Berlin Treaty ; 
but these powers, especially Germany and Eussia, were 
disinclined to act, and it was only fleets and armies that 
could move Turkey. Thus the nominal " Concert of Europe" 
came to an end. Since then successive British ministries 
have called the attention of the sultan to his failure to 
keep his promises pledged in the Berlin Treaty. These 
communications have only been replied to with polite 
evasions.^ 

In the year 1895 the world was appalled by the 
awful news of the Armenian Massacres. Information 
came through by degrees, till at length the total was 
summed up at figures growing from 20,000 to 25,000, 
50,000, and even 120,000, besides 5,000 to 6,000 
massacred at Constantinople. Men, women, and children 
had been done to death amid scenes of unspeakable horror 
and outrage. It seems clear that the Ottoman government 
had been alarmed by reports of a revolutionary movement, 
to which the more daring of this long-enduring nation 
had been goaded by the unchecked irritation of Turkish 
misrule. But the mass of the people had not taken any 
steps towards rebellion. How could they have done so 
with any hope of success, since weapons were forbidden 
to Christians, while Kurds and Turks went about fully 
armed ? Moreover, the massacre overwhelmed the innocent. 
There was no attempt to select the suspected revolutionists. 
Yet there was a species of very careful discrimination which 
pointed to orders from headquarters, and disposed of the 
excuse for Turkey which her champions would urge, that 

1 While this chapter is in the press the newspapers are recording the 
rejoicings of Turkey in the establishment of a constitution with freedom for 
all on the sworn promise of the sultan. The reader will know with what 
results. 



552 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



all this was but an outbreak of Kurdish savagery. The 
slaughter was confined to two classes of Armenians — the 
Gregorians of the national Church, and the Protestants. 
Uniats were spared as under the protection of France, and 
members of the Greek Church for fear of Eussia. 



DIVISION V 

THE COPTIC AND ABYSSINIAN CHUECHES 
— ♦ — 

CHAPTER I 

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE 
COPTIC CHURCH 

(a) Eusebius ; Socrates ; Sozomen ; Theodoret ; Evagriiis ; John 
of Ephesus ; Cosmas Indicopleustes, Typographie Ghretienne 
(Qth. century); John of Nikiou, Chronicle (7th century), 
French trans., 1883 ; Malan, Documents of the Coptic Church, 
Eng. trans. 

(6) Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap, xlvii. ; Neale, Patriarchate of 
Alexandria; Hefele, History of the Councils, Eng. trans., 
vols, iii., iv. ; Vlieger, Origin and Early History of the Coptic 
Church, 1900 ; Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Eng. 
trans., Div. n. vol. i. ; Leipoldt, Schenute von Atripe, 1903. 

The Coptic Church is the ancient national Church of 
Egypt, which was separated from the Greek Church in 
the fifth century because it did not accept the decision of 
the council of Chalcedon, just as the Syrian Church had 
been cut off by its refusal to admit the verdict of the 
council of Ephesus. While the Syrians adhered to Nestori- 
anism, the Copts maintained its extreme ■ opposite — 
Monophysitism. It is not correct to call them " Jacobites " 
— the title of the Syrian Christians wlio hold the same 
doctrine, because their position is independent of the more 
Eastern movement, and dates back to an earlier period. 
The few Egyptian Christians in communion with Constanti- 

563 



554 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



nople and the Greek Church are known as " Melchites," the 
followers of the imperial policy. The name " Copt " is an 
adaptation of the Greek Aiguptos, originally used for the 
Nile and then for the I and of the Nile, which is a Hellenised 
form of the old Egyptian title, Ra-Tca-Ptah — "Houses of 
Ptah," the and where Ptah dwells. The Arabs call the 
Copts QuUi. Thus the name simply means Egyptian.^ 
It has come to have an ecclesiastical significance, be- 
cause most of the Copts are of the Monophysite Church 
in Egypt, while the Mohammedans are known as Arabs, 
although in the mixture of races now occupying Egypt 
Berber and Nubian blood is mingled with that of the con- 
querors from Arabia as well as such of the native Egyptian 
stock as went over to the Muslim faith. In the towns the 
true Egyptians are mainly Christians; but the Fellaheen 
of the country, evidently constituting the original indi- 
genous peasant race, as their resemblance to the ancient 
monuments testifies, have been absorbed to a great extent 
into Islam. 

The Egyptian Church is undoubtedly one of the most 
ancient churches in the world, dating back almost if not 
quite to apostolic times, although, like the Eastern Syrian, 
and even the Eoman churches, it can furnish no historical 
record of its origin. The commonly accepted tradition 
that it was founded by St. Mark cannot be traced with 
certainty earlier than the fourth century ; ^ and the fact 
that this tradition is not to be found in Clement of 
Alexandria, Origen, or any other writer of the second and 
third centuries, raises our doubts about its historicity. On 

^ Vlieger, Origin and Early History of the Coptic Church, p. 7. This 
etymology is now almost universally accepted. Others, now rejected, are the 
derivation from the town Coptos, and worse than that, the derivation from 
the Greek Kbirrw, indicating either (1) schism, or (2) circumcision. 

2 It is found in the apocryphal Acts of Barnabas, which may perhaps be 
as early as the third century. The first reference to it in history is by 
Eusebius, who only makes it in the form of an allusion to a tradition that 
he does not undertake to authenticate : "and they say that this Mark was the 
first that was sent to Egypt, and that he proclaimed the gospel which he had 
written, and first established churches in Alexandria " {Hist. Eccl. ii. 16). 
Eusebius says that Mark was succeeded by Annianus when Nero was in the 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 555 

the other hand, the personal obscurity of St. Mark — apart 
from his authorship of the Second Gospel — is in its favour. 
Great ancient churches were eager to trace their origin to 
apostles. When Antioch, Alexandria's rival, claimed St. 
Peter for its founder and first bishop, it is not likely 
that the Egyptian patriarchate would voluntarily accept 
a second place by putting in a claim for no more 
important a person than that very apostle's secretary, 
unless some undeniable testimony had determined the 
matter. On this account, therefore, we may admit a 
shadowy probability that tradition is right here, and that 
St. Mark really did found the Church of Alexandria. 

In Egypt it is usual to refer the Babylon from which 
the First Epistle of St. Peter is dated to the place of that 
name on the Nile, near where Cairo now stands, and the 
seat of an important bishopric in early Christian times. 
But if the apostle himself as well as his secretary had 
been living there, how shall we account for the absolute 
silence of antiquity as to St. Peter's residence in Egypt 
and its attributing the origin of the Church there only to 
St. Mark ? 

Although among the Nile villages Christianity has 
been suppressed by the Mohammedan tyranny, this 
melancholy fact should not blind us to the recollection 
that in early times it found a very fertile field in Upper 
Egypt. While Alexandria was largely Hellenised, the 
country parts farther south remained thoroughly Egyptian. 
The consequence was that the philosophic metamorphosis 
of the ancient cult, that gave it a new lease of life in the 
educated Greek area of Egypt, was never accepted or 
understood among the simpler folk of the rural districts. 
But conservative as these southern people were, they 
failed to hold to their old gods when they saw them trans - 

eighth, year of his reign" (ii. 24), i.e. in a.d. 62. If he means that Mark 
had died then, apparently a martyr to the Neronian persecution, this is not 
consistent with the tradition that Mark wrote his gospel at Rome under the 
influence of Peter, or, as our best authorit}^ Ireufeus says, after Peter's death. 
After Eusebius, later references to Mark in Kgy])t— in Epiphanius, Jerome, 
Nicephorus, etc. — cannot be cited as affording ad<litioti;il testimony. 



556 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

formed out of recognition by the Hellenic movement. 
Thus they had been flung into a state of bewilderment before 
Christianity appeared as a new claimant for their faith, with 
the result that the gospel won its way among them with the 
more ease. Meanwhile, in the Hellenised north Christianity 
was adopted and adapted by the specific culture of the 
age, and, whether in heretical Gnosticism or more orthodox 
Origenism, it there appeared with peculiarities that were 
never appreciated up the Nile. The consequence was a 
difference between the purely Coptic churches of the south 
and the G-rseco-Egyptian Church of Alexandria. At a later 
time we shall see this distinction emphasised by doctrinal 
divisions when the Byzantine party obtains influence at 
Alexandria and makes that city the seat of the Melchites, 
while the Copts hold their own position in the south. It 
is in the churches of the Nile valley that we have the real 
root and spring of the genuine old Coptic Church. These 
Copts cared little for the enlightened Alexandrian theology. 
Their literature consisted of the Bible and tales of saints 
and martyrs. 

The Church in Egypt has the terrible but heroic 
distinction of being the most repeatedly and continuously 
persecuted body of Christians all down the ages of his- 
tory, from the second century almost to our own day. 
These much tried people endured at least their full 
share of persecution under the Eomans during the two 
or three centuries when Christianity was always illegal 
and at intervals fiercely assailed. Neale says that the 
Dominitian persecution does not appear to have reached 
Egypt, but that possibly there was some persecution 
there under Trajan. But the first persecution of which 
we have any information is that under Septimius Severus, 
which was concentrated with exceptional severity in this 
province, when Leonidas, the father of Origen, suffered 
martyrdom, a persecution to which the romantic story of 
Potamiaena belongs. Till this period the history of the 
Church is a blank. The Decian, which was the first of the 
really great persecutions deliberately designed to destroy 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 557 



Christianity on lines of seriously planned State policy, fell 
with exceptional force on the Christians of Egypt. Then 
many fled to the desert, only to be seized as slaves by the 
Arabs. The Diocletian persecution was also severely felt in 
Egypt. In the year 311, Peter the bishop of Alexandria was 
beheaded without a trial by order of Maximin. So effectually 
were the horror and the heroism of this persecution branded 
into the memory of the Church that the Copts named the new 
era of Diocletian " the era of martyrs." Of course Egypt 
shared in the quiet of the breathing time under Galienus's 
edict of toleration, and in the peace of the Church that 
came in with the edict of Milan. But this peace proved 
to be disappointing and delusive. Persecution soon revived 
in new forms, now claiming Christianity itself as an excuse 
for harshness to Christians. The Arian heresy first appeared 
in Alexandria, and the worst of the consequent troubles 
were felt in that city, under the infamous rule of George 
the Cappadocian, whom Constantius forced on the Church, 
ordained, as the impartial pagan historian Ammianus says, 
" against his own and the public interest." ^ Athanasius 
tells us that " virgins were thrown into prison ; bishops 
were led away in chains by soldiers ; the houses of orphans 
and widows were plundered," etc.^ According to Sozo- 
men, George " imprisoned and maimed many men and 
women," and was " accounted a tyrant and became an 
object of universal hatred."^ It is difficult to be very 
severe on the murderers of such a tyrant. They were 
pagans — not Athanasian Christians, as the Arians tried to 
show. 

Arianism was suppressed ; but new heresies disturbing 
the peace of the Church brought their train of troubles 
to Egypt. After the severance of the Monophysite 
party from the Greek Church, the imperial displeasure 
made life so hard for the Copts that they were ready to 
welcome the Arab invasion as a relief. But it was not 
long before they became the victims of Mohammedan 

^ Amm. Marc. xxii. 11. * De Fuga^ 6. 

» Bist. Eccl. iv. 10. 



558 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



persecution. With every change of masters they have 
hoped for better times ; but whether under Arab, Kurd, or 
Turk, the Christians have always been the sufferers from 
each new invasion and fresh conquest of Egypt, in additional 
exactions, restrictions, wrongs, and insults. This went on 
until modern Europe interfered with Egyptian affairs, and, 
last of all, England brought equal justice to all classes and 
freedom in rehgion for all faiths. 

Turning to the internal characteristics of the Egyptian 
Church, we may observe how in patristic times Alex- 
andria and the Delta, the cultivated north, were marked 
by liberaHsm both in polity and in doctrine. The sacer- 
dotal and episcopal claims of Catholicism were slower 
to make themselves felt here than in any other Church. 
Eutychius, a patriarch of Alexandria in the tenth century, 
records a very significant tradition throwing light on 
primitive times. He states that " St. Mark along with 
Ananias" — who is reckoned St. Mark's successor in the 
" episcopate " — " ordained twelve presbyters to remain 
with the patriarch; so that when the patriarchate should 
become vacant they might elect one out of the twelve, on 
whose head the other eleven should lay their hands, and 
give him benediction and constitute him patriarch." ^ After 
citing this statement, Neale adds that "so monstrous a 
story " would lead us to think the author a fabricator but 
for St. Jerome, who says that " at Alexandria till the middle 
of the third century the presbyters nominated and elected 
from among themselves to the higher dignity of bishop," ^ 
He attempts to save the situation by advancing the alter- 
native explanations, that either this was only an election 
by the presbyters, not a consecration, or the twelve must 
have constitued an "episcopal college."^ Both of these 
hypotheses are purely conjectural. They imply a regularity 
of episcopal ordination that was not enforced in early times. 
Bishop Wordsworth has shown that presbyterian ordination 

^ Annales in Migne, tome iii. p. 982. 

2 EpU. 146. 

^ Opus cit. p. 11. 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 559 

vsas not unknown.^ It would appear that a presbyterian 
government was maintained in Egypt after it had been 
superseded by episcopal government in other provinces, and 
that even after the recognition of the three orders, the 
second order, the presbyterate, remained here more important 
for a long time. There were fewer bishops in proportion 
to the Christian population ; the presbyters in the local 
churches over which they presided as individual pastors 
were more independent ; and the personal prominence of 
conspicuous elders was more marked in Egypt than else- 
where. Nothing is more striking in the clerical develop- 
ment of the Catholic Church, than the disappearance of 
the elder from an active part in affairs. He seems to be 
squeezed out between the bishop and the deacon. He has 
his seat in the apse at the communion ; but when we 
come to movements that excite public attention he is lost 
to sight, and we have only the bishop and his attendant 
deacon in view. But this picture does not represent the 
situation in Egypt, where we often meet with important 
elders. Two familiar examples spring into our minds 
immediately we reflect on the Alexandrian position. Origen 
was a presbyter — though ordained at Csesarea and therefore 
not reckoned as such by his bishop Demetrius ; Arius, too, was 
a presbyter. Further, Professor Harnack has shown that 
" unless all signs deceive us, we find that in Egypt generally, 
and especially at Alexandria, the institution of teachers 
survived longest in juxtaposition with the episcopal organisa- 
tion of the churches, though their right to speak at services 
of worship had expired." ^ 

^ The Ministry of Grace, p. 140, where the 13th canon of Anoyra is cited, 
namely, Country bishops (xw/3e7r/(r/co7roi)are not permitted to ordain (xetpo- 
Tovelv) presbyters or deacons, nor even is it permitted to city presbyters to do so 
except with the licence (x^/ols roO iinTpairrivaL) in writing of the bishop in eacli 
diocese." Here we seethe city presbyter (1) reckoned above the country bishop, 
and (2) permitted to ordain presbyters and deacons, the only restriction on his 
liberty in this matter being the requirement of a written licence from his bishop. 

2 Expansion of Christianity, Eng. trans., vol. i. p. 451. Dionysius of 
Alexandria, in the latter part of the third century, referring to his visits to 
Egyptian villages, says, " I called together the presbyters and teachers of the 
brethren in the villages " (Eus. Hist. Eccl. vii. 24). 



560 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



In the second place, when making a general survey of 
the early history of the Church in Egypt, we are struck 
with its intellectual energy and freedom. It had every 
advantage in these respects to start with. Alexandria 
was the centre of an old school of learning, where the 
grammarians pursued the study of the classics, and the 
rhetoricians preached from texts in Homer, the most 
venerable of those classics. It was also a seat of philo- 
sophical speculation, and here Neo-Platonism grew up side 
by side with Christian theology. The Jewish scholarship 
represented by the Book of Wisdom and the teachings of 
Philo taught people who used the Septuagint to combine 
its sacred authority with Platonic and Stoic speculations. 
As a great centre of commerce, Alexandria came under the 
influences of Kome and Athens, and combined these with 
Persian and even Indian ideas. The most cosmopolitan 
of all the great seats of scholarship, this city, when it 
received Christianity, was prepared to give the new 
doctrine the freest and most varied treatment. Here it 
was that the gospel came into contact with the widest, 
fullest, most energetic thought of the age. The faith that 
had first appeared among the valleys of Galilee was now 
launched on the ocean of the world's intellectual life. 
The inevitable consequences followed. Sometimes it was 
perverted out of all recognition ; at other times, while 
retaining its essential features, it was enriched by a noble, 
reverent development of its vital truths. The danger in 
both cases was that it should become little else than a gnosis, 
an intellectual system, a Christian theodicy, explaining the 
universe in terms of God as revealed in Christ. From 
this fate it was saved in early times by persecution. The 
dungeon, the torture chamber, and the executioner's sword 
taught men to take their religion seriously as a matter of 
life and death. 

Egypt was the birthplace of speculative theology, which 
may be said to have begun with the Gnostics in the first half 
of the second century. There was Syrian Gnosticism and 
Asiatic Gnosticism, but neither of these would bear compari- 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 561 



son for a moment in regard to intellectual vigour or influence 
on the Church's thought with the Gnosticism of Alexandria. 
Irenseus and Hippolytus discussed and condemned a great 
variety of Gnostic systems ; but all the while they had in 
mind the one system of Valentinus as the most serious 
rival of Catholic orthodoxy, winning its converts in the 
cultivated and fashionable Christian society at Eome 
as well as in many parts of the empire — and probably 
Valentinus was an Alexandrian. 

Then it was in Alexandria that speculative Christian 
theology sprang up in opposition to the dangerous dis- 
integrating Gnosticism of the heretics as itself a true 
gnosis. Clement calls the enlightened Christian a Gnostic. 
In his De Principiis Origen gives us the earliest treatise 
on systematic theology in the Church. These scholars of 
Alexandria wrote in Greek ; they belonged to the northern 
Hellenised community of Christians ; but we must not 
forget that this was on the Delta and by the Nile. Origen, 
the greatest of them all, was a Copt. Thus the most 
daring thinker in the early Church was not of the Hellenic 
stock, where we look first for the budding of the speculative 
intellect ; he was of the race of men who built the 
Pyramids and Karnak, and wrote " the Book of the Dead," 
and gave the world the myth of Osiris. 

Coming down a little later, we see Arianism — the 
heresy that most seriously divided the Church for two 
generations, the only heresy that ever had the upper hand 
in Christendom — first promulgated and first condemned in 
Egypt. But it is a remarkable fact that this system, while 
it arose at Alexandria, found more real support in Con- 
stantinople and other cities away from Egypt. That 
is one of the facts to be borne in mind when we find 
Origen and his school charged with the parentage of 
Ariauism. A full enquiry brings out results in which 
two such very different scholars as Cardinal Newman 
and Professor Harnack are found for once to be agree- 
ing. It is not to Alexandria, but to Antioch ; not to 
Origen, but to Lucian, that we are to trace the seeds 
36 



562 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



and sources of Arianism.^ Arius was condemned in his 
own Church at Alexandria quite early in the develop- 
ment of his teaching, and the place was soon made too 
hot for him, so that he had to escape. After that it is 
not likely that anything more would have been heard of 
Arianism if he had not made a convert of the influential 
Eusebius of Nicomedia, court chaplain to Constantine, a 
vigorous, astute, unscrupulous ecclesiastical politician. Sub- 
sequently, whenever the heresy is dominant in Alex- 
andria, that is only owing to the forcible intrusion of an 
alien bishop, who obtains and holds the patriarchal 
chair by the aid of the imperial troops. In this way 
Arianism in Egypt came to be synonymous with tyranny 
and oppression, and its supremacy involved the Coptic 
Church in persecution. 

It was not here, therefore, that the Copts were in- 
clined to fall out of line with the Catholic Church. Their 
tendency drove them in quite the opposite direction. It 
pointed to the accentuation of the idea of the Divinity of 
Christ to the neglect of His humanity. Alexandria took 
the lead in opposition to ]N"estorianism. Here, as so often 
in other connections, the rivalry between Alexandria and 
Constantinople embittered the controversy, degrading it with 
political intrigue and the heat of offensive personalities, 
Cyril has been canonised and his writings are accounted 
standards of orthodoxy. But the unprejudiced reader 
must admit that they go a long way to prepare for the 
heresy that was to be condemned at the next oecumenical 
council, the denial of the two natures in Christ by the 
virtual suppresion of the human. 

Eutyches followed on similar lines, and yet his develop- 
ment of the same trend of thought did not meet with the 
approval of the Church, and came under condemnation as 
a heresy. Now it is true that this heresy first appeared 
at Constantinople. Its advocate Eutyches was the archi- 
mandrite of a large monastery near that city. But he 
was a friend of Cyril, from whom he had received a copy 

1 See p. 43. 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 563 



of the Acts of the council of Ephesus, and he had 
vigorously seconded the patriarch of Alexandria during 
the Nestorian controversy, behaving as a fiery opponent 
of Nestorianism. Moreover, Cyril's immediate successor 
Dioscurus was the champion of Eutyches and the author 
of the type of thought less crude than that the old 
archimandrite had expounded, which went by the name of 
the Monophysite heresy. The disgraceful proceedings of the 
"Eobber Synod" were chiefly due to the conduct of Dioscurus 
and his monks — unworthy representatives of the Egyptian 
Church. 

Again and again we see the turbulent Coptic monks 
leading the mob in some act of violence. At the storming 
of the Serapeum, in the murder of Hypathia, during the 
Monophysite disputes, when the worst deeds of violence 
were done, if this was not by the soldiery, it was by the 
monks who poured in from the Nitrian desert or some 
other distant retreat, crowding the streets of Alexandria, 
and stirring up the dregs of the populace to criminal 
outbreaks. We must remember that monasticism had 
first appeared in Egypt. Following the example of the 
Therapeutae, first as solitaries in their huts and caves, 
then, in the second stage, founding the Coenobite life, the 
Egyptian monks laid the foundation of the vast system 
that spread over Syria and Asia Minor, and finally took 
possession of the whole Church, to the extent of securing 
the position that though a man might be a monk without 
becoming a saint, he could not be a saint unless he had 
been first a monk. Now it is not to be denied that there 
were genuine saints among the monks. The ascetic life 
had a fatal attraction for the strongest natures ; it seemed 
to present the loftiest ideal to them. Such a monk as 
Father Jeremiah, the hermit whom the Emperor Anastasius 
had known in his early days, and whom he highly honoured 
when he reached the imperial throne, appears to have 
been a really good man, unselfish and unworldly. No 
doubt there were many such, whose names have never 
been preserved in history. But herein lies the fatal evil 



564 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



of the whole system as it was developed in Egypt. There 
were monks who behaved like savages — ignorant, super- 
stitious, ferocious men. Some were guilty of nameless 
vice. But these degenerates were not the causes of the 
worst evil of monasticism. The worst mischief was wrought 
by the withdrawal of the best people from civic and 
domestic life. Thus the population of Egypt was checked 
in those very circles that should have dominated it if the 
character of the people was to attain a high standard, and 
the most serviceable men were withdrawn from the service 
of mankind. This was felt all over the empire. Eventually 
it became one of the causes of the fall of Eome. But 
nowhere did it have more serious consequences than in 
Egypt, the scene of the origin of monasticism and always 
that of its greatest popularity. Mrs. Butcher describes 
this rush to the monasteries as " the suicide of a nation." 

One of the most famous of the Egyptian monks was 
Senuti, who lived during the second half of the fourth 
century and the first half of the fifth. The son of an 
Egyptian farmer, and brought up as a shepherd lad, he 
entered the monastery of Panopolis, near Athrebi, in Upper 
Egypt, and became a venerated monk, credited with super- 
natural powers, and known as the prophet. Cyril took him 
to the council of Ephesus, where he had a prominent place 
as a vehement, and if we are to believe his disciple and suc- 
cessor Besa, a violent part. According to this admirer of 
the venerated monk, Nestorius entered the council with 
great pomp, and, seeing the roll of the Gospels on the lofty 
throne in the centre of the hall, flung it down and seated 
hirhself there ; whereupon Senuti picked up the volume 
and hurled it at Nestorius. Naturally the proud patriarch 
was indignant, especially when he learned that his assailant 
was of no ecclesiastical rank. Cyril quickly remedied that 
defect by creating his valiant henchman an archimandrite 
on the spot. How far this story is to be believed depends 
on what we think of its author in the sequel. He goes 
on to say that, when Cyril had started back for Egypt at 
the conclusion of the council without Senuti, the monk was 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OP COPTIC CHURCH 565 



wafted across on a cloud. So highly venerated was he, 
that Maximus, the Eoman commander, before setting out 
on an expedition against those obscure people called the 
Blemmys, sought him out in the desert for his blessing, 
much to the saint's annoyance at the interruption. The 
idea that he joined the extreme party of Dioscurus after 
the council of Chalcedon may be an error.^ Be that as it 
may, undoubtedly he was a bitter leader in the persecution 
of JSTestorius till the death of that unhappy ecclesiastic. 
Senuti is said to have lived to the wonderful age of 118, 
and to have died when Timothy ^lurus was patriarch. The 
remains of his writings are gathered up among the frag- 
ments of early Coptic literature. It is a singular fact that 
Senuti is never mentioned by any Greek or Latin author. 
Prominent as his friend Besa suggests his position at the 
council of Ephesus to have been, none of our other accounts 
of that council make the least reference to him. This 
silence rather favours the view that he did overstep the 
narrow line of orthodoxy in his unflagging opposition to 
Nestorianism. If that were the case, we can well under- 
stand why the friends and admirers of Cyril would observe 
a discreet silence with regard to a man who, though of 
dubious orthodoxy, had nevertheless been that great 
patriarch's chief trusted assistant. Among the Copts no 
saint could be more highly venerated ; but the Copts are 
heretics. 

The circumstances that led to the final severance of 
the Coptic Church have already been traced in earlier 
chapters.^ The decree of Chalcedon deposing Dioscurus 
was the direct cause. The thirteen bishops who had 
accompanied him were in a terrible dilemma. Hieracles, 
their spokesman, pointed to a canon of Nicsea, declaring 
that the whole of Egypt should follow the bishop of 
Alexandria and do nothing without him. It was of no 

^ This is asserted as a positive fact by Salmon in Smith's Die. of Ohr. 
Biog. vol. iv. p. 612% but Leipoldt in his work, Schenute von Atripe, main- 
tains that there is no evidence whatever of his having supported Dioscurus, 

2 Part I. chaps, v. vi. 



566 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



avail. The papal legate who ruled the council treated 
their plea with contempt. " Have pity on us ; have pity 
on us ! " cried the feeble old men. No pity was shown 
them. They were forced to sign the deposition of their 
patriarch, and then packed off to Alexandria to see to the 
election of his successor. There they were met v^dth a 
storm of indignation. Proterius, who had been serving as 
locum tenens for Dioscurus during his absence, and who 
therefore was presumed to be one of his supporters, now 
turned round to accept ordination on the lines of Chalcedou. 
This raised the passions of the populace to fever heat. We 
cannot be surprised that the excited people, hating the 
renegade for his treason to their banished patriarch, and 
taking advantage of the temporary weakness of the govern- 
ment at the death of Marcian,rose in a mad riot, and murdered 
the man they regarded as a Judas. Thus another red stain 
was added to the annals of the Coptic Church. When, on 
the death of the banished patriarch Dioscurus, Timothy 
^lurus was elected his successor at Alexandria, the rivalry 
of the two parties in the city was revived. This was before 
the murder of Proterius ; but that crime did not end the 
quarrel. The new Emperor Leo banished ^lurus, and a 
really good man, Timothy Surus or Salofaciolus, was elected 
to the patriarchate on the basis of Chalcedon. So highly 
respected was he that people would greet him in the street, 
saying, " Even if we do not communicate with thee, yet we 
love thee." Efforts were now made by moderate men to 
bring about a settlement that should unite the two parties. 
But the cleavage was too deep. It was racial as well as 
theological. The party of Chalcedon, the Melchites, were 
Greek ; the Copts were Monophysite almost to a man. 
This is the secret of the obstinate continuance of the 
schism. It was a national movement, and the intrusion 
of patriarchs of the Greek persuasion was resented as an 
outrage on the rights of the national Church. The new 
Coptic patriarch, John Talai, who seems to have acted weakly 
if not dishonourably in accepting the vacant post on the 
death of the good Timothy (a.d. 482), when the emperor had 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 567 



commissioned him only to try to bring about a reconcilia- 
tion between the two parties, was really the representative 
of the national Church as against the Greeks, and of 
Christian rights and liberties generally as against imperial 
interference. It was the same even with that unworthy 
man Peter Mongus, whose election the emperor encouraged 
in place of John, since the patriarch's double-dealing had 
given great offence at Court. 

Evagrius states that, as a result of Zeno's Henoticon — 
which simply silenced controversy without settling it, 
" when this had been read, all the Alexandrians united 
themselves to the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church."^ 
That, however, is not correct. Evagrius is a fair-minded 
historian, but always too anxious to make as little as possible 
of ecclesiastical divisions — a rare fault in his age and venial. 
In point of fact, when Peter Mongus signed the Heii'.'t',.n,n ^ 
the extreme Monophysites broke off from communion with 
him, and so earned the title of the AcepJmli. Still, there 
was outward peace ; and this was maintained in Egypt 
under Zeno's successor, the amiable Anastasius, whose 
reign saw the quarrel transferred to Constantinople on 
account of the favour shown by the emperor to the 
Monophysites. On his death and the accession of Justin 
to the throne (a.d. 518), the temporary Monophysite 
triumph was ended, the Henoticon cancelled, and all the 
Church required to agree to the decision of Chalcedon, 
with the inevitable consequence that the temporary reunion 
of Egypt with the orthodox Church was ended. Thus the 
Copts were again cut off as a heretical body. 

Then came the controversy on " The Three Chapters " 
under Justinian. The weak emperor had been persuaded 
to condemn Theodoret, Ibas, and Theodore of Mopsuestia 
as guilty of Nestorianism. It was suggested that the real 
objection to the council of Chalcedon lay in its approval of 
these three theologians, rather than in its doctrinal state- 
ments. Thus it was hoped that by making scapegoats of the 
dead men, who could not defend their case, all parties might 
1 Hist. Eccl. iii. 14. 



568 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

be satisfied. The second council of Constantinople (a.d. 553) 
took a middle course, and, while anathematising " The Three 
Chapters " in which their supposed errors were • set forth, 
exonerated two of them, Theodoret and Ibas, and only 
condemned the third, Theodore of Mopsuestia, who no 
doubt was the actual originator of Nestorianism. Thus 
this council leaned towards the Monophysite position. 
But the Egyptian Church took no notice of its decisions. 
Then came Jacob al Bardai and his vigorous campaign in Syria 
under the patronage of the Empress Theodora, the result 
of which was the separation of the Syrian Jacobite Church 
from the Nestorians and a great addition to the Monophysite 
strength in the East. Such a triumphant proselytising in 
favour of their theology could not but be very encouraging 
to the Copts. Unfortunately the new controversy with 
the Julianists on the incorruptibility of our Lord's body — 
which Julian of Halicarnassus had maintained — brought 
fresh trouble to the Church of Alexandria. It was a 
great pity that the Monophysites should now begin to 
quarrel among themselves just when they were becoming 
most powerful. But it was the same with the Protestants 
in the later days of Luther and Zwingli, and with the 
Methodists in the separation between Wesley and 
Whitfield. Expediency coimts for nothing when men's 
convictions are at stake. The Julianist division at 
Alexandria facilitated the appointment of an orthodox 
patriarch — one of the Greek persuasion — who of course 
was acceptable to neither body of Monophysites. It is 
like the case in an English election when a Conservative 
is returned for a Liberal constituency because there is a 
split in the Liberal camp. In this case, however, the 
appointment of a Melchite meant the victory of the 
imperial over the popular party. Syria and in a measure 
Armenia, as well as Egypt and Abyssinia, were now of the 
Monophysite persuasion. 

The Monothelete proposal was the last attempt at 
reunion with the lost provinces on doctrinal grounds. 
The case was desperate. The lopping off of these limbs 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 569 

from the orthodox Church was a very serious matter 
when regarded from the Catholic standpoint. But another 
consideration gave urgency to the situation. First Persia, 
the age-long rival of the Eoman Empire of the East, 
had become aggressive, and had carried its victories even 
into Egypt. Then a new terror had risen in the South, 
where it was least expected, and Arabia threatened ruin 
both to Church and empire in the sudden rise and 
triumphant march of Islam. Thus there was a strong 
political as well as a grave religious motive for uniting 
the divided Church and empire. Although proposed by 
the patriarch of Constantinople, the Monothelete idea was 
really put forth on lines of imperial policy. It was offered 
to the Chui'ch by the government ; and it made some 
headway under the influence of authority. Cyrus the 
bishop of Phasis, on condition of accepting the novel 
doctrine, was made patriarch of Alexandria by the Emperor 
Heraclius (a.d. 630); and he won over some of the Mono- 
physites. But he could not make much headway, and 
meanwhile Sophronius, the champion of orthodoxy, was 
successfully resisting the spread of the new heresy in the 
Greek Church. The Ectliesis which the Emperor Heraclius 
issued as an authoritative edict of religious doctrine (a.d. 
638), plainly leaning towards the Monothelete idea, though 
approved by councils at Constantinople and Alexandria, 
never made any progress towards securing real conviction 
among the people of either party. The whole idea of this 
latest refinement of Christology was inept and futile. 
It deserved no better fate, for it was founded on policy, 
not on conviction ; and it was promoted by State authority, 
not by religious reasoning. Equally political, equally 
resting on government influence, was the Type, which 
the Emperor Constans put forth in the year 648, and 
which, without pretending to favour either side, forbade 
any further controversy and threatened severe penalties 
against all who should dare to break the rule of silence. 
About thirty years later the heresy was condemned by the 
third council of Constantinople (a.d. 680—681). 



570 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



ITone of these attempts at reconciliation, compromise, 
and suppression had succeeded in bringing back the 
Egyptian national Church into union with the Greek 
Church. It has ever since remained in separation. With 
the exception of some 6,000 Melchites, mostly Greeks, 
nearly all the Christians in Egypt at the present day are 
Monophysites. The national Church of Egypt, the Coptic 
Church, is of the same faith as the Jacobite Church in 
Syria. 

Eeturning for a little to the internal condition of the 
Coptic Church during this period, we see that for sixty 
years after the banishment of John Talai there had been 
no Melchite patriarch in Egypt. Then Justinian forced a 
man named Paul into the vacant post (a.d. 541). No 
Copt would recognise him. But a cruel injustice was done 
to the national Church in transferring its revenues to the 
Melchite patriarch, who enjoyed them in his sinecure office, 
while the patriarch who was actually working at the head 
of the Church in Egypt was left dependent on the freewill 
offerings of his people. It was the same with the clergy under 
him. The ecclesiastical endowments and official revenues 
were confiscated for the little handful of Melchites. The 
situation is parallel to that of the United Free Church in 
Scotland in our own day; and that without any parliament to 
secure a tolerable equity. Thus the Coptic Church was not 
only anathematised by the orthodox Church ; it was disestab- 
lished and disendowed by the State. Yet it was not crushed; 
nor did the small favoured community gain anything but the 
sordid profit of revenue by the unfair transaction. With 
all its endowments it never flourished, never grew. It has 
remained to this day a phantom Church with offices, but 
without functions, and in all respects an alien in the land 
on which it was forced many centuries ago. After the 
Mohammedan invasion, this Melchite organisation lost its 
privileges and its dues. 

Meanwhile the real Church of Egypt became more 
national. The hturgies were now translated into the Coptic 
language. Early in the reign of the Emperor Maurice 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF COPTIC CHURCH 571 

(a.d. 582) there was a revolt in North Egypt, headed by 
three brothers — Abaskiron, Mena, and James — against the 
blue, or imperialist party, which for a time succeeded in 
wresting almost the whole of the Delta from the govern- 
ment. Other revolts followed. How plainly we can see 
in this seething discontent the undermining of the Byzantine 
power in Egypt. It fell for a time under the Persian 
invasion, which could not have been altogether unwel- 
come to the Copts. It was temporarily restored by the 
victories of that great military genius, the Emperor 
Heraclius. But the situation was such that the empire 
could not expect to find loyal defence in Egypt against 
the dread Mohammedan invasion, when the Arab army 
was on the wing Uke a swarm of locusts. And yet 
defence now meant nothing less than protection of 
Christendom from imminent total ruin. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 

(a) The Arabian authors previously named : Patrologia Orientalis, 
i. 4, Peter i. to Benjamin i., Arabic text and Eng. trans. ; 
Theophanes, Chronographia ; John of Nikiou, Chronicle, 
French trans. ; Malan, Documents of the Coptic Church, 
especially Makrizi, Hist, of Copts ; Renaudot, Historia 
Patriarcharum Alexandrinorum Jacohitarum (18th cent.). 

(6) Gibbon, chaps, xlvii. and li. ; Neale, Patriarchate of Alex- 
andria ; Mrs. Butcher, History of the Church in Egypt, 1897 ; 
Butler, Arab Conquest of Egypt, 1902 ; Lane Poole, Hist of 
Egypt in the Middle Ages, 1907. 

The position of the Copts at the time of the Persian and 
Arab conquests of Egypt is without parallel in history. 
Two successive invasions swept over their country with 
but a short interval between them. This interval wit- 
nessed the brilliant exploits of Heraclius, who rescued 
the Byzantine Empire when it seemed likely to break 
down utterly and finally, and gave it a new lease of life, 
though not any approach to its former splendour. Now 
the question is, What was the attitude of the Copts during 
these three kaleidoscopic changes of the map of Empire ? 
They were the persecuted native Christians of Egypt who 
had been robbed of their ecclesiastical revenues and finest 
churches, and who saw the alien Greek Melchites, them- 
selves but the shadow of a church, enjoying these ancient 
endowments and possessions. They could have felt no 
sense of loyalty towards their great oppressor, the Byzan- 
tine government. Nevertheless it is certain that they 
did not help or encourage the Persian invaders. This is 
proved by the cruel treatment they received. There were no 

672 



THE PERSIAN AND AEAB CONQUESTS 



573 



less than six hundred monasteries in the neigliboiirliood of 
Alexandria.^ These monasteries were walled and fortified, 
and the inmates endeavoured to hold out against the 
Persians. They were all besieged, captured, and destroyed ; 
and the monks were put to the sword, with great slaughter. 
The same cruel warfare was carried up the Nile as far as 
Syene, and many monks were slain all along the line of 
conquest. The Persian King Chosroes allowed Andronicus, 
the Coptic patriarch, to remain in Alexandria as he had 
allowed the patriarch Modestiis to remain at Jerusalem. 
No doubt he liad reasons of state for these conspicuous 
acts of leniency. It was well to mark the difference 
between the national patriarchs and the Byzantine 
officials. 

On the other hand, the Copts were less inclined to 
join the enemies of the Byzantine Empire just now than 
at any other time. The Emperor Phocus had made him- 
self hated by all his subjects — Greeks as well as Egyptians 
and Syrians. Accordingly, when Heraclius led the revolt 
against the brutal tyrant, the whole empire had been ready 
to rally to the standard of the great general and assist 
him in a course of ambition which promised to make for 
the common weal. After that the Copts were not likely 
to side with the enemies of the man whom they had helped 
to set on the throne. The notion that they had done so 
is a pure fabrication of their Melchite caluminators. Their 
own grievous sufferings from the sword should have saved 
them from this false charge. 

After Heraclius had repelled the Persian invasion, he 
was still regarded in a more friendly way by the Copts 
than had been the case with other Byzantine emperors ; 
and at first he took some pains to cultivate pleasant relations 
with them. He did not go so far as to refuse to appoint 
a Melchite patriarch. That would have been to give 
mortal offence to his Greek subjects all over the empire. 

^ "Six hundred glorious monasteries like dove-cotes," says the ancient 
writer of the "History of the Coptic Patriarchs of Alexandria," iu 
Fatrologia Orientalis, tome i. fasc. 4, p. 465. 



574 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

But he was careful to select for the office a man whose 
life and character were in high repute even among the 
national Christians. This was John, who came to be sur- 
named " the Almoner." The immensity of his charities 
is some evidence of the wealth of the sinecure post that he 
held as nominal patriarch of Alexandria, and it may help 
to explain the bitterness felt by the impoverished national 
Church that had been robbed in order to endow this alien 
and generally useless office. The Church had a large 
share in the enormous graiu trade which passed between 
Alexandria and Constantinople, and all the profit of this 
now went into the coffers of the Melchite patriarch. John 
did the best thing that seemed possible for him under the 
circumstances. He did not renounce the wealth which only 
came to him in his official capacity, and of which he regarded 
himself as a trustee ; but he gave it away with more than 
princely generosity. He distributed daily relief among 
7,500 poor people in Alexandria. After the sack of 
Jerusalem by the Persians, he sent to that city of many 
woes gifts of money, food, and clothing, with a modest 
letter in which he said, " Pardon me that I can send 
nothing worthy the temples of Christ. Would that I 
could come myself and work with my own hands at the 
Church of the Eesurrection." 

Here we may see one good result of the Persian 
invasion. It was the indirect means of drawing the Syrian 
and Egyptian Churches together in bonds of real Christian 
sympathy. John the Almoner was treading in the foot- 
steps of St. Paul when he sent aid to the " brethren at 
Jerusalem." In the autumn of the year 615, while John's 
caravans were crossing the desert, the Jacobite patriarch 
of Antioch, Athanasius, paid a visit to Anastasias, the Coptic 
patriarch of Alexandria, meeting him at the Ennanton 
Monastery on the seacoast west of Alexandria, where some 
Syrian monks were already staying for a time in order to 
revise the Syriac Bible by collation with the Greek text, 
while others had come as refugees from the Persian in- 
vasion. This meeting brought about a result which the 



THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 575 



Melchite John's charities could not effect. It issued in a 
union between the Syrian and the Coptic Cliurches, both 
of which were of the Monophysite creed. 

The deplorable surprise of the reign of Heraclius 
appeared only too soon. The man who had the genius to 
save the empire had not the common sense to govern it. 
Heraclius was one of the greatest generals the world has 
ever seen ; he proved to be one of the most incompetent, 
blundering rulers who ever mismanaged a great empire. 
We do not expect a soldier to be a theologian, and Heraclius 
maybe forgiven for leaving the subtleties of Christology to his 
professional adviser, Sergius, the patriarch of Constantinople. 
But he cannot be excused for the inconsiderate way in 
which he forced what he intended to be an olive branch 
on to the people whom he desired to reconcile with ortho- 
doxy. He did not even consult Benjamin, the patriarch 
of the national Church of Egypt at the time. Cyrus, his 
nominee for the Melchite patriarchate of Alexandria (in 
the year 630), was the very worst man to select as a 
conciliator. Cyrus took his appointment as an excuse 
for forcing his alien Melchite authority on the national 
Church of Egypt. His cruel policy was anticipated from 
the hrst. Benjamin the Coptic patriarch fled into hiding 
directly Cyrus landed (a.d. 631). He knew what this 
mission meant. The Coptic monks were now worse off 
than the British monks of Bangor, when Augustine, less 
than thirty years before this very time, had approached 
with orders to compel them to submit to Eome. They 
fled in all directions. So did many of the clergy of 
the national Church. All were seized with terror. And 
their fears were justified. Those who resisted Cyrus 
were severely dealt with — imprisoned, tortured, killed. 
Many, however, submitted, even among the bishops. There 
are few more pitiable passages in the history of the Church 
than this. Here we have a brief interlude between one 
non-Christian invasion and another — between the pagan 
Persian and the Mohammedan Arab invasion. During 
this short interval a Christian power is ruling in Egypt. 



576 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Yet it proves to be a time of misery for the national 
Church. The dominant party of Christians spend it in 
brutally persecuting their fellow-Christians. 

Cyrus's violent measures went on for ten years. After 
seven or eight years of this persecution, Heraclius made 
his last attempt at securing the peace of the Church by 
the issue of the Ecthesis} advocating the newly invented 
Monothelete idea. It is probable that outside Alexandria 
the monks never heard of the existence of this document. 
No extant Coptic writing betrays any knowledge of it. To 
the Copts their old friend Heraclius appeared to have been 
changed into a persecutor, trying to force them back to the 
hated Chalcedonian heresy. This was a double mistake. 
The Ecthesis was a departure from Chalcedon, and as such 
was destined ultimately to be anathematised by an oecu- 
menical council, and the emperor was no persecutor, but 
a peacemaker — in intention. Meanwhile, from the first 
Cyrus was exceeding his master's orders and directly con- 
tradicting the spirit of them. In being vested with 
supreme authority over Egypt he was able to oppress the 
Copts, who do not seem to have dreamed of going behind 
him to appeal to Heraclius, as though they had had any 
doubt of his approval of Cyrus. It must be admitted that 
although his original intention had been pacific, Heraclius, 
like Constantino three centuries earlier, was driven by force 
of circumstances into at least an acquiescence in persecu- 
tion. This is the inevitable destiny of the autocrat who 
desires to force comprehension by the mutual reconciliation 
of all differences on his reluctant subjects. Heraclius 
must have known of Cyrus's persecution. Unless he was 
too weak to interfere, he must have acquiesced in it. No 
doubt in the latter part of the ten cruel years he was 
bitterly disappointed with his pet device for settling ecclesi- 
astical differences. His Ecthesis was a last attempt at 
conciliation, and, in spite of some temporary success, in 
the end it proved to be a failure, partly because it was 
entrusted to the wrong hands. 

1 See p. 129. 



THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 577 

The sequel to Heraclius's magnificent feat in hurling 
back the Persians from Egypt and Syria and re-establishing 
the crumbling power of the Byzantine Empire is one 
of the greatest disappointments in history. For the 
moment it looked as though the glorious days of Con- 
stantine or Theodosius were returning. Then rose the 
thunder-cloud from the Arabian desert, and the hosts of 
Islam swept over province after province, till at length, 
after centuries of Titanic wrestling, the remnant of the 
Eoman Empire in the East was finally subdued, and the 
Crescent gleamed on the central dome of St. Sophia, there 
to remain till the present day. 

Now we have to see the relation of this triumphant 
march of Islam in its early days to the Copts and their 
Church. Mohammed never entered Egypt, The prophet 
died in the year 632. It was seven years later that 
the Moslems invaded Egypt. Omar was then caliph. A 
letter he had despatched to Amr', who was on the way to 
Egypt, recalling the general to Medina, had reached its 
destination, but Amr' did not open it, and marched on in 
spite of what he suspected to be its orders. His sub- 
sequent victories condoned the act of insubordination. 
There can be no doubt that these victories were won partly 
by aid rendered in Egypt itself. But there is some con- 
fusion in reference to the source and manner of this 
assistance. It has been attributed to the Copts. If that 
were correct, we could hardly regard them as traitors, since 
they were already the subjects of a foreign master in the 
Byzantine emperor, who represented the alien Church that 
had appropriated their ecclesiastical property. It was but 
a question of a change of masters. Still, the Byzantine 
Empire, though viewed by the Copts as heretical in its 
acceptance of the decrees of Chalcedon, was a Christian 
power, and the admission of the Moslem conqueror was an 
encouragement to Islam as a rival religion which threatened 
to stamp out the faith of Christ. The persecution of 
Christians by their fellow-Christians is never more con- 
vincingly futile as a defence of the faith than when it 
37 



578 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

drives the victims into the arms of the infideL But it 
is not proved against the Copts that they rendered any 
practical assistance to the Arab invaders. They were 
crushed and scattered by the Melchite persecution that had 
followed the issue of the Ecthesis and its enforcement by 
Gyrus. Benjamin their patriarch was in exile ; his flock 
was in no condition to seriously influence public affairs. 
The action that was taken to smooth the way for the 
invader came from another source, and that a source the 
circumstances of which made it far more treasonable in 
character. A mysterious personage, known to the Arat 
writers as " the Mukaukas," described as " the chief ruler 
of Egypt," has been accused as the chief traitor to Chris- 
tianity at this juncture. Mr. Stanley Lane Poole suggests 
that the mystery of his personality may be explained on 
the hypothesis that two distinct persons are involved 
under the same name. He accepts the view that the title 
Mukaukas, as a form of a Greek word meaning "most 
glorious,"^ appears to have been used for any Byzantine 
official. Now, in the year 628, a certain Egyptian official 
of the empire named George, and bearing this title, sent 
two slave girls, a white mule, and a pot of Benha honey as 
presents to Mohammed, and one of the slave girls, known 
as " Mary the Copt," became a concubine of the prophet. 
Twelve years later we meet a Byzantine official with the 
same name and title as Mohammed's friendly Mukaukas ; 
possibly, however, it is suggested, he is not the same man, 
but perhaps a son. This George rendered the Arabs some 
assistance in taking Misr. In return he got these terms — 

(1) A moderate poll tax for the Christians, consisting of 
two dinars (about £1, Is. Od.) per head, a land tax, and 
the requirement of giving three days' hospitality to soldiers. 

(2) No peace with the Eomans till they were all made 
slaves. (3) A promise that when George died he should be 
buried in the church of St. John at Alexandria. 

If this view were adopted, we could not reckon the 
Mukaukas to be a very important person, and the difficulty 



THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 57 9 

would be to account for so much fuss being made about him 
and his treachery. But another theory is advocated by Mr. 
Rutler, which, if it is adopted, will throw a very different 
light on the story. This is that the official with the 
barbarous name in the Arab chronicles is no one else than 
the well-known Cyrus, the Melchite patriarch of Alexandria. 
So astounding a conception is enough to take away our 
breath when it comes upon us for the first time. 
The reader must be referred to Mr. Butler's exhaustive 
examination of the whole case for an adequate appreciation 
of the evidence, which is cumulative.^ The theory appears 
to have been originated by the Portuguese scholar Pereira. 
It starts from a statement of Severus of Ushmunaim, that 
" Cyrus was appointed by Heraclius after the recovery of 
Egypt from the Persians to be both patriarch and governor 
of Alexandria? This is very significant. It points to a 
double office, and suggests the idea that the man who was 
at the same time at the head both of the civil and of the 
ecclesiastical establishments at Alexandria could really 
dominate Egypt. We can well understand the Arabian 
view of him. Then it is suggested that the strange title 
Mukaukas, that has given rise to so many conjectures, is 
derived from the word kaukasios^ and indicates Cyrus, who 
came from Phasis in the Caucasus as a native of that 
district.'* It is certain that Cyrus entered into early 
negotiations with the Mohammedan General Amr', pro- 
mising him an annual tribute and the emperor's daughter 
Eudocia for his harem if he would withdraw his troops. 
Heraclius was in a rage when he heard of his official's 
daring proposal, and summoned him to Constantinople, 

1 The Arab Conquest of Egypty Appendix c. 

2 See also Patrologia Orientalis, tome i. fasc. 4, "Hist, of Pat." : " Wh( n 
Heraclius obtained possession of the land, he appointed governors in every 
place, and he sent a governor to the land of Egypt named Cyrus, to be prefect 
and patriarch at the same time " (p. 489). 

^ KaVKOLCTlOS. 

* Other suggested derivations are from /cai^Acoi', a supposed copper coin, and 
Kavdov, a little bowl ; or perhaps the term is a dark allusion to vicious 
practices. 



580 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



where we should have expected his immediate execution. 
But the terror of the Arabian invasion was so great that 
the emperor sent Cyrus back to arrange terms. When 
the Mukaukas was at Babylon, the ancient Coptic capital, 
he had carried on secret negotiations for surrender. But 
his policy had then been frustrated. Alexandria, open to 
the sea and strongly fortified by land, should have stood 
a long siege. It was surrendered without a blow.^ This 
apparently needless action of the defenders is attributed 
to the treachery of the Mukaukas. It may have been 
owing to a wise policy for the protection of the city, its 
treasures, and its citizens. Subsequently Alexandria was 
recovered by the Byzantine ; and after that the Arabs 
took it by assault. It is difficult to see what Cyrus had 
to gain by treachery. But there is no doubt that he 
negotiated terms of surrender with the Arabs. The fact is 
confirmed by John of Nikiou, who states, however, that 
Cyrus was not alone in desiring peace, the inhabitants 
generally also wishing for it.^ On the other hand, he 
states that Amr' fought for twelve years against the Chris- 
tians of North Egypt before he succeeded in conquering 
that province — the very district where Cyrus had most 
influence.^ When Alexandria was taken the stern Amr' 
forbade pillage. 

The famous story of the destruction of the library is 
now discredited. According to the statement of Abii- 
1-Farag, Amr' consulted Omar as to what he should 
do with the books, and the cahph replied, " If these 
writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, 
they are useless and need not be preserved ; if thej 
disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be de- 
stroyed." So, we are told, they were distributed among 
the 4,000 baths of the city, and even then it took six 
months to burn them all. Gibbon follows Eenaudot in 
throwing doubt on this picturesque story, and later critics 
have confirmed their scepticism. It is not to be met with 

^ John of Nikiou, Chronicle, cxvii ^ Ihid. cxx. 

^ Ihid. cxv. 



THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 581 



till the thirteenth century, six hundred years later.^ Besides, 
it is in itself unlikely. It is very doubtful whether there 
was a library of any considerable size in Alexandria at 
the time. Ptolemy's famous library appears to have been 
destroyed by Caesar. A few years later the library of the 
kings of Pergamum was lodged at the Serapeum ; but when 
the Serapeum was destroyed by the mob in the fourth 
century, this library must have been burnt or scattered. 
Then John Philoponus, who, according to the late Arab 
story, had asked Amr' for the books, could not have been 
living in the year 642, because he is known to have been 
writing more than a century before this date. Moreover, 
the Arabs did not enter Alexandria for eleven months after 
the city had capitulated, and during all that time the 
inhabitants were free to carry off their treasures. When 
the entry was made, Amr' prohibited destruction of pro- 
perty. Lastly, there is the inherent improbability — as Mr. 
Butler points out — that books, many of them of parch- 
ment, would be used for lighting 4,000 bath fires. It 
would have paid the bathmen better to have sold them to 
scholars, many of whom would have come forward as eager 
purchasers. Putting all these facts together — the destruc- 
tion of Ptolemy's library by the Eomans in the first century 
B.C. ; the destruction of the Serapeum, which contained the 
library from Pergamum in the third century A.D. ; the evident 
impossibility of that part of the story that introduces the 
name of Philoponus ; the ample opportunity for saving the 
books given to the Alexandrians ; Amr's rigorous pro- 
hibition of deeds of violence ; and the general impro- 
bability of the whole narrative — we have ample reasons 
for rejecting the tradition as not true. 

After the Arab conquest of Egypt, the centre of govern- 
ment was removed from Alexandria to Fustat (" the tent "), 
near what is now known as " Old Cairo." This place was 
more easily reached from Medina and at the same time 
out of the Byzantine influences of Alexandria. Here the 
government was carried on for two hundred and fifty years. 
1 In 'Abd-el-Latif and Abu-l-Fardg. 



582 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



As regards the two parties of Christians, the tables 
were turned. The orthodox, being the party of the 
Byzantine Empire, were in disfavour, and they were robbed 
of their swollen possessions, some part of which reverted to 
its rightful owners, the Copts. At first these people were 
leniently treated. Amr' received a deputation of monks 
begging for a charter of rights and the restoration of their 
patriarch Benjamin after an exile of thirteen years.^ In 
reply he graciously granted the charter and invited the 
patriarch to return. His decree ran as follows : " Let every 
place, wherein Benjamin the patriarch of the Coptic 
Christians may be, possess full security, peace and trust 
from God : let him come with safety and fearlessness, and 
freely administer the affairs of his Church and people." ^ A 
little later the Copts were allowed to build a church 
behind the bridge at Fustat. Altogether the national 
Church in Egypt was at first much freer and happier under 
the rule of the unbeliever than it had been under that of 
the orthodox emperor. Benjamin was now able to conduct 
a thorough visitation of his churches unmolested. On the 
other hand, Amr' would allow no retaliation on the Melch- 
ites. The two Churches were to live together side by 
side. For the time being there was peace in Egypt. This 
is one of the few interludes between the many severe per- 
secutions and the long weary ages of ill-treatment to which 
the Christian inhabitants have been subject. 

Nevertheless, it is only by comparison with the more 
harsh government of later times that we can regard this 
early Arab period as pacific and lenient. In England or 
America we should think the tyranny of Islam even at its 
best simply intolerable. In accordance with the universal 

^ John of Nikiou, cxxi. 

^ Severus in Renaudot, pp. 163, 164. In the " Hist, of the Patriarchs " the 
decree is given as follows : ' ' Amr' wrote to the provinces of Egypt — ' There 
is protection and security for the place where Benjamin the patriarch of the 
Coptic Christians is, and peace from the governor. Therefore let him come 
forth secure and tranquil, and administer the affairs of his Church and the 
government of his nation,' " Patrologia Orientalis, tome i. fasc. 4, pp. 495, 
496. 



THE PERSIAN AND ARAB CONQUESTS 583 



rule — the choice being Islam, tribute, or the sword — the 
Christians were heavily taxed, while the Mohammedans paid 
no taxes. Thus they, together with the Jews, bore all 
the financial burden of the State, paid the expenses of the 
government and the army, and supported the luxuries of the 
harems. Over and above this, their lives were spared and 
their freedom of worship was allowed only on the following 
conditions : — 

1 . The Koran must not be reviled nor copies of it burnt. 

2. The Prophet must not be spoken of disrespectfully. 

3. Islam must not be condemned or reviled. 

4. No Christian may marry a Mohammedan woman. 

5. No attempt may be made to convert or injure a 
Mohammedan. 

6. The enemies of Islam are not to be assisted. 

To these general regulations there were added certain 
humiliating restrictions, as that houses of the Christians 
must not overtop houses of Mohammedans ; the ringing of 
church bells must not be forced on the ears of Moham- 
medans ; crosses must not be displayed in public ; Christians 
must not ride on thoroughbred horses ; certain burial 
ordinances must be observed, etc. 

Gradually the Christians were made to feel that, though 
within the limits imposed upon them they could enjoy a 
considerable measure of personal liberty, they were in a state 
of social bondage. The extraordinary democratic nature of 
Islam gave to Egyptian converts equal privileges with the 
invaders from Arabia, except in some military matters. 
Accordingly, it was not Jike the case of the invasion of 
England by William the Conqueror, after which the 
Normans as conquerors lorded it over the defeated English. 
In Egypt the native people could share the privileges of 
the victorious Arabs if they would adopt the religion of 
their masters. 

Viewed from a distance and in the abstract, this policy 
may appear to be large-minded, noble, generous. Eeligion 
is exalted above race, and the victor is willing to share 
the spoils of war with the vanquished, on conditions that 



584 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



do not make for his own material advantage. Thus, though 
a religion of the sword, Islam maintains its character 
as essentially, by its creed and constitution, a missionary 
religion. On the other hand, this very characteristic of the 
Mohammedan government added to its pressure of tyranny 
on those people who adhered to another faith. It was all 
the worse for the Christian Copt to see his fellow-Egyptian 
passing over to the rival faith and so increasing the forces 
of the oppressor. For an oppressor the Mussulman ruler 
must be, as regards the Christians, even when his methods 
are the mildest. Bribery was resorted to as an additional 
means of detaching the weak from the Church and winning 
them to Islam. If these things were done in the green 
tree, what was to be expected in the dry? Although 
the Arab rule in Egypt began so moderately that the 
Copts were ready to rejoice in it for the relief it 
afforded from the Melchite tyranny, they were soon to have 
reasons for repenting of the welcome they had given it. 
It was not long before their disadvantages were increased, 
and from time to time in the subsequent centuries they 
were harassed with savage outbreaks of persecution. The 
Christians never enjoy full liberty under Islam ; they are 
always treated as inferiors, if not as outlaws ; and they are 
often subject to great cruelty without hope of redress. 
Egypt has proved to be no exception to this melancholy 
generalisatioD. 



CHAPTER III 



THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 

(a) The Arabian authors ; John of Nikiou, Chronicle ; Makrizi ; 
Eutychius ; Amelineau, Etude sur le Christianisme au Egypte 
au Septieme Siecle (containing translation of Life of Abbot 
Pisentius) ; Renandot, Historia Patriarcharum Alexandrin- 
orum ; Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, 1741 ; Abu Salik, The 
Churches and Monasteries of Eyypt (died a.d. 900 ; Eng. trans. 
1895). 

(6) Gibbon, chap. li. ; Neale, Patriarchate of Alexandria^ vol. ii. ; 
Mrs. Butcher, History of the Church in Egypt, 1897 ; Lane 
Poole, Hist, of Egypt in the Middle Ages, 1907. 

The Coptic monks of this period, first harried by the 
Persians, next persecuted by the Melchites, and then 
oppressed by the Arabs, were now at their highest stage 
of culture. The mission of scholars from Syria to an 
Egyptian monastery for the revision of their own Scriptures 
is one sign of this fact. It seems clear that the Melchites 
studied the Greek classics as well as the Church Fathers. 
This is shown by classical allusions in their writings. How 
far these studies were shared by the Copts, however, is not 
quite evident. But under the liberal rule of John the 
Almoner there was more friendly communication between 
the two churches than at any other time either before or 
after. Sophronius, the orthodox opponent of the Edhesis, 
came from Alexandria, and he composed an elegy on the 
Holy Places in Anacreontic verse, — but of course he was a 
Melchite. A friend of John the Almoner and Sophronius, 
John Moschus, gives an account of his visits to Egyptian 
monasteries in a famous book, entitled Spiritual Pastures} 

^ AeifxCjv irvevfxaTiKbi. 
586 



586 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

These two men afford considerable information regarding the 
manners and customs of the churches and monasteries of 
Egypt in their day, and show how full of intellectual life 
they were. For instance, in his account of a monk whom 
he calls " Cosmas the Student," John Moschus says, " We 
shall write nothing from hearsay — only what we have seen 
with our own eyes. He was a simple - minded man, 
abstemious and clean living : he was easy tempered and 
sociable, given to hospitality, a friend of the poor. He 
rendered us the very greatest service, not only by his specu- 
lation and his teaching, but because he possessed the finest 
private library in Alexandria, and freely lent his books to all 
readers. He was very poor, and the whole of his house, which 
was full of books, contained no furniture but a bed and a 
table. His library was open to all comers. Every reader 
could ask for the book he wanted and there read it. Day 
by day I visited Cosmas, and it is a mere fact that I never 
once entered his house without finding him engaged either 
in reading or in writing against the Jews. He was very 
reluctant to leave his library, so that he often sent me out 
to argue with some of the Jews from the manuscript he 
had written." Cosmos told John that he had lived there 
for thirty-three years. When asked what he had learnt 
during all this long time of study, he answered that the 
three principal things were " not to laugh, not to swear, 
and not to lie." ^ 

The monks were diligent students and copyists of 
books. Coptic illuminated manuscripts, some of which 
are dated as early as this period, are reckoned as among 
the treasures of art on their own account, and also because 
their decorative work set an example for the mediaeval 
monks. The church architecture of the Copts had 
attained to real splendour, and was developing germs of an 
originality that was destined to have a remarkable effect 
on Saracenic and Gothic building. Instead of the uniform 
classic capital, a new foliation now appeared. Mosaic 
work in brilliant coloured glass, which we think of as 
^ John Moschus, quoted by Butler, Arab Conqiiest of Egypt, pp. 99, 100. 



THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 



587 



essentially Byzantine, was also developed by the Copts. 
About this time also they began to produce the highly 
wrought marble carving known as Opus Alexandrinum. 
Mr. Lethaby has recently pointed out the remarkable 
resemblance between the Coptic textiles of the fifth and 
sixth centuries, in which knotted and plaited work is used 
freely, and old Saxon ornamentation. Not only may Coptic 
vestments devised in this style have found their way to 
Britain, but the flight of the monks, first before the Persians 
and later before the Arabs, may have resulted in some of 
them coming themselves as far west, Mr. Lethaby remarks : 
" Such a theory would account for a sudden appearance of 
this type over a wide field. The fact that the earliest 
examples of Arabic silks made in Egypt (seventh and eighth 
centuries) are ornamented with bands of braided patterns 
which are obviously a continuation of the Coptic designs, 
goes to show how powerful the tradition was. The time of 
Theodore, the eastern Archbishop of Canterbury (669-690), 
would be particularly favourable for the migration of monks 
and artists from the Orient. Only a few years after the 
death of Theodore, the Lindisfarne book was written and 
decorated, and about the same time knot-work first appears 
in Italian stone carving."^ 

At the later period when Saracenic architecture began 
to develop as a new order astounding the world with its 
delicate beauty, the actual work was primarily dependent 
on Greek and Coptic designing and handicraft. Mosques 
were planned by Greek architects, and their fine decorative 
work executed by Coptic craftsmen. The Arabs were 
warriors and rulers ; they were not builders and artists. 
Their natural home was the desert tent, and when they 
indulged in the luxury of cities they were dependent on 
the skill of the conquered peoples whom they forced into 
their service. At first pillars were torn from Christian 
churches to be used in the construction of Moslem mosques. 

^ The Origin of Knotted Ornamentation, " Burlington Magazine," January 
1907, with references to i/o??,a5tere . . . de Baouit, " M^moires d'Arche- 
ologie," etc., vol. xii., Cairo, 1906. 



588 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



When the Mohammedans began to make the shafts of 
pillars, they crowned them with stolen Christian capitals, 
and when they had entirely new work done this was 
executed by men of the Christian stock, although in many 
cases these men conformed to Islam. All along North 
Africa and even in Spain the Arabesque designs are 
largely of Coptic and almost entirely of Christian origin. 
Being adopted by Mohammedans, they are adapted to 
the principles of the Koran. The Alhambra may have 
reminiscences of the Bedouin tent in its domestic arrange- 
ments, but its architectural style is a direct descendant and 
development of the Alexandrian. 

Cyrus died soon after the Arab conquest of Egypt. 
He was nominally succeeded by a Melchite patriarch 
named Peter, who found it convenient to retire to Con- 
stantinople, where he persuaded the Emperor Constans 
to substitute the Type for the Ecthesis} After his death 
there was no Melchite patriarch of Alexandria for more 
than seventy years (a.d. 654—727). Such priests of the 
orthodox Church as still came to minister to its few Greek 
adherents in Egypt then obtained their ordination in Syria. 
Meanwhile the national Church, which had enjoyed a 
measure of favour under Amr', was not long in discovering 
the real significance of the rule of Islam. Benjamin was 
succeeded in the patriarchate by Agatho (a.d. 659), who 
had to confine himself in his own house for a time to 
escape from the demands of a priest of the orthodox 
communion named Theodosius. This man had succeeded 
in obtaining from the Caliph Yezid a grant of contribu- 
tions from the Coptic patriarchate. When Agatho died, 
Theodosius boldly took possession of the patriarch's 
residence and affixed his seal to all that it contained. 
This was going too far. Abdel-Aziz, the governor of 
Egypt, interfered, and the impudent priest was forced to 
beat a hasty retreat. The new Coptic patriarch was John 
Semnudaeus, who took advantage of the temporary favour 
of the government to advance the interests of the Copts. 

1 See p. 129. 



THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 589 



This was perhaps the most flourishing time of the 
Coptic Church. The Mohammedan government was 
friendly, the Melchites were unable to annoy, and the 
mills and oil presses of the patriarchate were bringing 
in good revenue, which the patriarch used to relieve 
distress throughout the whole country during a time of 
famine. So John Semnudseus was a second Joseph. 
But he was not permitted to end his days in peace. John 
attempted to act as mediator between the Emperor of 
Ethiopia and the King of Nubia, who were at war. Abdel- 
Aziz was induced to treat this action as a political intrigue 
for the overthrow of the power of Islam, and he condemned 
the patriarch to be beheaded. Happily the governor 
was persuaded to spare John's life, and he contented 
himself with ending the incident by ordering certain 
sentences affirming the Mussulman faith to be written on 
the church doors.^ 

Something more nearly approaching real persecution 
was practised by the emir's eldest son, Asabah, who was 
influenced by an apostate Copt named Benjamin. He 
laid a capitation tax of a gold piece on every monk 
and a tax of a thousand pieces of gold on every 
bishop, and he forbade anybody for the future to take 
monastic vows. The father and the son died near the 
same time ; but this did not mend matters. The Caliph 
Abdel-Melech appointed his son Abdallah to be governor of 
Egypt (a.d. 705). He proved to be a savage tyrant after 
the fashion of one of the monsters of cruelty in the Arabian 
Nights. For instance, he would order a guest's head to 
be taken off while sitting with him at table. When the 
patriarch Alexander ventured to enter the palace to do 
homage to the new emir, Abdallah flung him into prison 
and demanded 3,000 pieces of gold as the price of his 
freedom. This governor of a province of the Mussulman 
Empire was acting just like a brigand from the mountains. 
The patriarch had no means for raising his ransom till 
George his deacon obtained leave for his liberation to 

1 Neale calls this the " First Persecution under Abdel-Aziz. ' 



590 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



go round the towns and villages collecting the money, 
promising to bring him back at the end of two months. 
From being the distributor of bounty to the poor of the land 
the patriarch of Egypt was now reduced to the humiliating 
necessity of tramping from place to place among his flock 
in order to save his life and liberty. By this means the 
money was obtained. But that did not satisfy the rapacious 
emir. He had churches despoiled of their treasures, and 
Christians who had not registered in his census — which 
was only an expedient for extortion — branded on their 
forehead or hands. At last he pressed his extortions by 
torture. This provoked a rising in Upper Egypt, which 
was quickly quelled, with the inevitable result that the 
persecution became more severe. 

On the death of the Caliph Abdel-Melech, and the 
succession of his son WaHd, Abdallah was superseded by 
Korah-ben-Serik as Emir of Egypt. For the unhappy 
Christians every change was only a change for the worse. 
When Alexander presented himself before Korah to offer 
the expected homage of the patriarch to the governor, he 
was met with the same demand that Abdallah had made, 
and showing he had no means of paying, set o£P to Upper 
Egypt to collect the money. After two years' wandering 
he was only able to obtain a third of the amount re- 
quired. The emir was suspicious, and believing a report 
that Alexander had a private mint, sent for it to his 
residence, where, since no trace of it could be found, the 
patriarch and his attendants were savagely scourged. The 
persecution was continued under the next emir, Amasa, with 
much cruelty. The repeated exactions of money, which 
were among its chief characteristics, give it a wretchedly 
sordid appearance. The motive was so evidently selfish 
greed rather than high policy of state. 

At length the Melchites ventured in electing a patriarch 
to the post that had been vacant so long, and their choice 
fell on a needle-maker, Cosmas, who could neither read nor 
write, but who justified their wisdom in appointing him by 
his able management of a peculiarly difficult position. He 



THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 



591 



took a journey to Damascus and there had an audience with 
the caliph, whom he succeeded in convincing that he was 
in the true line of the ancient patriarchate of Alexandria, 
and so got several of the churches taken from the Copts 
and given up to him. It was a most unhappy revival of 
the old intrusion of the Greek Church in Egypt, and 
one more trouble for the much afflicted native Church. 
After this the Copts had great difficulty in electing a 
patriarch for their own communion. When they had suc- 
ceeded in coming to an agreement on Chail I., the governor 
loaded them with fresh money exactions, in order to pay 
which some sold their cattle, and some even their children. 
Many bishops fled and hid in the monasteries. 

In the year 748 a new governor, Hassan, was appointed, 
and for a time he was friendly towards the Christians. It 
is pitiable to see that one consequence was that both parties 
— the Melchites and the Copts — appealed to the govern- 
ment in a dispute about the possession of a church — St. 
Mennas in the Mareotis. This appears to be the first case 
in which two bodies of Christians have brought their 
quarrel into a Mohammedan court of law. The emir gave 
his decision in favour of the national Church. The glint 
of favour was but transient. A little later the emir threw 
Chail into a dungeon, together with three hundred Christians 
of both sexes. The patriarch was only liberated in order to 
undertake the weary work of collecting money for their 
ransom in Upper Egypt. 

The emir became so tyrannical that he drove the 
Copts in Upper Egypt to another rebellion. Both the 
patriarchs, Cosmas the Melchite and Chail the Copt, were 
taken prisoners ; the former was let off on payment of 
a ransom, and the latter was employed to use his influence 
with his flock in bringing them to submission. The war 
was complicated by the quarrels now going on among 
the Mohammedans, and the Christians joined the faction 
of the Abbasidse. Their success brought immediate relief 
to the Church. 

A curious sidelight is thrown on the status of the 



592 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

Coptic Christians in the eighth century by the Mohammedan 
historian Makrizi. Under the favour of the new Hue of 
caliphs and their emirs in Egypt, they now entered on a 
temporary era of prosperity, which was viewed with jealousy 
by their Mussulman fellow-subjects. According to Makrizi, 
they assumed a proud bearing and flaunting airs. " It 
came to this," he says, " that one of the Christian secretaries 
passed before the Mosque el Azher in el Kahira (Cairo) 
riding in boots with spurs, and white bands roimd his head 
after the fashion of Alexandria, with footmen going before 
him to drive away the people lest they should throng him, 
and behind him a number of slaves in costly apparel on 
prancing steeds. A lot of Mussulmans then present ill- 
brooked this ; so they rose up against him," etc.^ The 
result was a disturbance in which the proud Copt was 
roughly handled. This passage is very significant. In the 
first place it indicates the prosperity of the Copts who had 
succeeded in making their way into official positions. Then, 
as in the present day, it would seem that their special aptitude 
for clerkships and secretaryships gave them an advantage 
over the Arabs in regard to these offices. The pride of a 
member of a persecuted community during a short interval 
of immunity may seem surprising. But such a man as we 
see here is Hfted out of the common rut by his official rank. 
The reference to Alexandria is peculiarly interesting. Cairo 
was a Mohammedan city from its foundation ; but Alexandria 
was the old Christian capital. Alexandrian manners would 
seem to have retained a flavour of the old Eoman imperial 
temper. But anything of the kind was certainly out of 
place in Cairo under a Mussulman emu\ We are not 
surprised to learn that Christians who made any assumption 
of self-importance were roughly treated by the Cairene 
mob. There were times when it was not safe for any 
Christians to show themselves in the streets, when they 
were compelled to stay indoors for their lives. Makrizi 
goes on to tell how after this the Christians were forbidden 
to enter the public service even if they embraced Islam, 
1 Malan, pp. 106 fif. 



THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 593 



and ordered to attend five prayers and the Friday assembly 
at the mosques and other places of gathering for prayer.^ 

In the course of the civil war that broke out after the 
death of the famous Caliph Aaron-al-Easchid, the Spanish 
Arabs of the house of the Ommiadse, which had been 
superseded by the Abbasidse, invaded Egypt and made 
slaves of their prisoners of war. Mark the Coptic 
patriarch offered to buy all these slaves, and his offer was 
gladly welcomed, so that 6,000 prisoners were liberated 
in this way. 2 Alexandria was captured, but while the 
besiegers were resting off their guard the Arabs rose and 
commenced an indiscriminate slaughter of Jews and 
Christians as well as Spanish troops. Mark escaped to 
the desert, where he remained in hiding for five years. 

Much of the Coptic history of this period consists of 
little else than stories of the successive patriarchs, few of 
whom seem to have been men of any power or importance. 
The patriarch Jacob, who was at the head of the Coptic 
Church early in the ninth century, attained to some fame, 
which induced his brother patriarch at Antioch, Dionysius, 
the author of the Chronicle from the beginning of the World 
to his own times,^to pay him a visit. Yucab, who became 
Coptic patriarch in or near the year 837,^ consecrated 
bishops for the more remote parts of his diocese, especially 
by the borders of the Eed Sea. He also cultivated an 
intimate friendship with the Melchite patriarch Sophronius. 
But though for the time being this may have softened the 
acerbity of sectarian animosity between the two parties, it 
did not lead to any steps towards bringing them together. 
Yucab died in the year 850, and was succeeded by Chail, 
the second Coptic patriarch of that name. Almost 
immediately after this the peace which the Church had 
enjoyed, broken only by temporary outbreaks, for nearly 

1 Malan, p. 108. 

2 Neale, who always writes as a strong partisan of the Melchites, remarks 
on this noble deed, " Heresy probably thus reaped a harvest of converts," 
Patriardiate of Alexandria, vol. ii. p. 139. 

3 According to Makrizi, in 842. 

38 



594 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



fifty years, came to an end, and the old trouble caused by 
the rapacity of the emirs was vexing it again. The 
patriarch 'even had to sell the sacred vessels of his church 
to meet the demands of the civil governor. The Caliph 
Mutawekkil now lays down many vexatious regulations for 
the Christians. They are to wear honey-coloured cloth, or 
a distinguishing patch on their garments ; the men are to 
have a girdle after the style of women ; they are to put 
up a wooden image of a devil, an ape, or a dog over their 
doors ; no crosses may be shown ; neither may they have 
processions through the streets with lights ; they may not 
ride on horses ; nothing must be set up on their graves to 
mark them. Still annoying and insulting as all this is, it 
cannot be compared with the violent persecutions of earlier 
and of later periods. After the year 856 most of the 
emirs were Turks, since men of this race were now coming 
more and more to the front in the army and government 
of the caliphate, while the old vigour of the desert warriors 
was deserting the Arab families amid the luxury and 
sensuality of their life in cities. The Turkish emirs of 
Egypt were able men, and some of them mild and merciful 
rulers. During the patriarchate of Chenouda, a man of great 
influence in the Coptic Church, the governor Abdallah 
doubled or trebled the taxation of the Christians. His 
difficulty was with the monks, who owned no property, 
and he put a tax on their fruit and vegetables. Chenouda 
retired into seclusion for a time, but subsequently he came 
out and presented himself before the emir, who then came 
to terms with him. It was the same perpetual question of 
how much money could be squeezed out of the Christians 
which had so long disgraced the story of the emirs in 
Egypt. In this agreement between Abdallah and Chenouda 
it was settled that the Church of Alexandria should pay 
an annual tribute of 2,000 and the monasteries of 2,300 
pieces of gold. 

The greatest of the Turkish emirs was Ibn Tulun, who 
has left his name on a famous mosque at Cairo. This 
man was originally a Turkish slave. He married the 



THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 595 

daughter of the Emir Bargug, who gave him a free hand, 
so that at the age of thirty- three he became really the 
governor of Egypt (a.d. 868). Then he began to live 
in kingly state. Tulun was no friend to the Christians. 
He ruthlessly levelled the Christian graves for a new 
town between Fustat and the Mokattam hills. In the 
year 878 he renounced allegiance to the caliph, took 
Damascus, captured and sacked Antioch. This was the 
first mutiny in Egypt since the Arab conquest. Although 
Tulun was a fierce and ruthless destroyer when on the 
warpath, he revived the power of Egypt in the East, and 
beautified Cairo with some of the finest work of Saracenic 
architecture. He died of the fatigues of his tremendous 
life when on his travels, in the year 884, before he was 
fifty years of age. 

These were dark times for the Copts. The Melchite 
party had come into temporary favour and the national 
Church was under a cloud, when a deacon, maintaining that 
he had been wrongly treated by Chenouda, appealed to the 
governor Ahmed, who thereupon summoned all the Coptic 
bishops to his presence. Chenouda had gone into hiding, 
but he was discovered and dragged out. The bishops were 
stripped of their episcopal robes, and, clad as simple 
monks, led through the streets on the backs of asses 
without saddles amidst the jeers of the mob. The 
patriarch was flung into a dungeon and kept there for 
thirty days, in the hope that he would pay a handsome 
ransom, which, however, was not forthcoming. This 
incident ended strangely. The accusing deacon professed 
penitence, and Chenouda granted him absolution ; but the 
penitent soon proved his insincerity by bringing various 
false accusations against Christians. When his villainy 
was discovered the emir had him scourged almost to dea1}h. 
Chenouda died in or about the year 881, after a patri- 
archate full of trouble and vexation. Great as was his 
influence among his own people, he seems to have been a 
weak, timorous man, unsuited to the rough times in which 
his lot was cast. But Egypt was not the soil to bring 



596 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

forth a Hildebrand or a Thomas a Becket, and even if one 
of those heroes of ecclesiasticism had appeared under the 
rule of Islam, it is difficult to see how he could have 
developed his powers. 

Chenouda's successor, Chail ill., had as troublesome a 
time as that of the unhappy patriarch whom he was called 
to follow. His misfortunes sprang from what occurred 
during his visit to Xois, in the diocese of Saca, for the 
consecration of a new church. The service was unaccount- 
ably delayed by the absence of the bishop, till it 
was discovered that he was entertaining his friends at 
a preliminary banquet which was unduly protracted. 
On learning this, the indignant patriarch commenced the 
service. When the bishop came in and saw what was 
happening he flew into a rage, seized the bread of the 
Eucharist and flung it on the ground. The next day 
Chail and the other assembled bishops met and excom- 
municated the offender. This man then went to the 
Emir Tulun, and informed him that the patriarch had 
enough wealth to pay for his projected military expedition. 
Chail was summoned, and ordered to give up everything 
belonging to the Christian worship except the vestments. 
Eefusing to do this, he was sent to prison and kept 
there for a twelvemonth. Then he was let out on 
the condition that he should procure 20,000 pieces of 
gold, one-half in a month, the rest in four months. Chail 
took refuge in a Melchite church, and apparently did 
nothing towards accomplishing his really impossible task, 
till it was pointed out to him that there were ten vacant 
bishoprics, by charging fees for the appointment to which 
he might raise money. By this and other disgraceful 
means he got a considerable amount, but not nearly half 
what was required. As a last resource he went to Alexandria 
and bargained with the clergy for their church ornaments 
in return for a pledge to pay the Alexandrian Church a 
thousand pieces of gold every year in perpetuity. Even 
then he had only half the huge sum demanded of him by 
the emir, who, however, died before taking measures to 



THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 597 

force the wretched patriarch to make still further efforts 
at obtaining the rest of the money. 

The practice of taking money for appointments to 
bishoprics invented by Chail ill. was often adopted by 
subsequent patriarchs. The Alexandrian tribute and the 
exactions of the government were the excuses for a custom 
that the Church has always condemned as simoniacal. 
The money was not taken for the personal advantage of 
the vendors. It was requisitioned as an absolute necessity 
for the payment of obligatory dues. Still, the practice 
was owned to be a scandalous evil, and the better 
patriarchs endeavoured to break it off. Chail himself 
ended his days as a penitent mourning for his double 
offence of violating the canons and alienating the property 
of the Church. 

The condition of Egypt under the Mohammedan rule 
was now going from bad to worse. The caliphs endeavoured 
to retain their power over it by a frequent change of emirs, 
so that no one governor should have time to establish 
himself in independence. Emirs would bribe the caliphs 
for appointment and reappointment, and, of course, wring 
the money for this backshish from their miserable subjects, 
the Christians always being the greatest sufferers. But, on 
the occasion of one of these emirs imposing a new tribute 
on bishops and monks, a deputation of Christians went to 
Bagdad to represent to the caliph the intolerable condition 
of affairs, and succeeded in obtaining an order that nothing 
beyond the usual tax should be exacted from them. While 
they were being bled the Christians were also being starved. 
One emir ordered that neither Christians nor Jews should 
be employed in any other way than as physicians and 
tradesmen. 

Eutychius, commonly known as Said, the chronicler of 
this period of Coptic history, was a Melchite patriarch early 
in the ninth century. He was a man of some culture, 
who had studied and practised medicine and written a 
treatise on that subject. He was also the author of a 
disputation between a Christian and a heretic, and a 



598 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



work on the history of Sicily after the invasion. 
But his best known work is his annals of Alexandrian 
history, entitled Contexture of Gems, a dreary book reveal- 
ing a credulous mind on the part of its author. During 
Said's patriarchate the petty Melchite community was dis- 
turbed by internal quarrels, which led to the interference of 
the emir, who took occasion to seize the Church treasures 
— said by the Copts to be very great — and transport them 
to his palace at Misr. He only allowed them to be 
redeemed on payment of 5,000 pieces of gold. The 
caliphate had now declined to a state of miserable 
weakness. In fact it was a mere shadow, and each emir 
ruled in his own province. Thus Mohammed Akchid, 
the emir in Egypt at this time, became an independent 
governor. It was useless to appeal against him to the 
caliph as the Copts of an earlier period had appealed to 
the caliph of their day. Therefore the independence of 
Egypt only meant more misery for the Egyptians, and 
that without hope of redress. 

Theophanius, a Coptic patriarch who began his rule 
in the year 954, added to the troubles of the times by 
developing madness. He was taken by water to Misr for 
medical treatment ; but one night during the voyage his 
delirious screams so alarmed his fellow-passengers, that one 
of the bishops descended to the hold and killed him — by 
suffocation or, as some said, by poison. 

On the death of Akchid, who seems to have been a 
strong ruler, Mazzin of the Fatimite family — the rivals of 
the feeble remnant of the Abbasidse line — succeeded in 
taking Egypt. Thus there was established the Fatimite 
caliphate in Egypt. They settled their headquarters 
at Cairo in the year 970. This dynasty lasted for two 
centuries. At first promising reform under a strenuous 
government, it rapidly degenerated, most of the sovereigns 
being absorbed in their own pleasures and displaying no 
great ideas and no ambitions.^ But for the Christians 
much of this period afforded a breathing space between 

1 See S. Lane Poole, Hist, of Egypt, p. 116. 



THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 599 

their long harassing persecutions. Jnst as in the old 
Eoman times the strong and good emperors persecuted 
the Church, and the weak and bad emperors let it 
alone, so under the Mohammedan rule, while the fierce 
fanatics of Islam bore hardly on the "infidels," the 
negligent, sensual Fatimites treated them with easy 
toleranace. 

The best of the Fatimite caliphs was El-Aziz (a.d. 
975—996). He had a Christian wife, one of whose two 
brothers was appointed by the caliph as Melchite patriarch 
of Alexandria, and the other as Melchite patriarch of 
Jerusalem. The Christians were never so well treated 
under Mohammedan rule in Eg^^pt as during this reign.^ 
Although the caliph had married a Melchite, this sect 
was not selected for exclusive favour. The Coptic patri- 
arch Ephraim was highly honoured at court, and he 
obtained leave to rebuild the ruined church of St. Mercurius. 
The caliph encom^aged Severus, the bishop of Ushmuneyu, 
to discuss questions of theology with Mussulman scholars 
in his presence. Severus is chiefly known to us by 
his history, on which Eenaudot based much of his 
narrative. Like all the literature of the time, it is 
credulous and tedious. Severus was a voluminous writer, 
composing an exposition of the faith, a treatise against 
Eutychius, an explanation of the mystery of the 
Incarnation, a commentary on the Gospels, and other 
works. 

The liberal-minded Caliph El-Aziz even refused to 
punish a Mohammedan who had turned Christian — a 
capital offence according to the law of Islam. On the 
other hand, he appointed Christian Copts to high offices 
under his government. This course of action excited the 
jealousy of the Mohammedans, who obtained the removal 
of some of these officials. But in course of time the 
caliph restored them to their posts. Meanwhile El-Aziz 
was living in luxury and splendour ; so that for this 
brief interval the members of the much persecuted Coptic 
^ See S. Lane Poole, Hist, of Egypt, p. 119. 



600 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



Church were able to enjoy the good things of the world, 
and to look back on the dark days of their fathers as a 
horror of the past. 

Too often when the sunshine of worldly prosperity 
has shone on the Church, this has been almost fatal 
to her spiritual life and character. This appears 
to have been the case under the Fatimite complacent 
rule. Thus the patriarch Philotheus is charged with 
the sin of simony, of which we hear so much in the 
annals of the Church in Egypt, but without the excuse 
of his predecessors in the old hard times : for he is 
said to have lived in luxury, and to have devoted himself 
to the pleasures of the table and the bath like any effete 
Oriental, ignoring the duties of his office and neglecting 
his flock. 

This time of unusual good fortune for the Church 
in material affairs was followed by the very reverse, a 
more terrible persecution than any from which it had 
hitherto suffered under the yoke of Islam — the violent 
outbreak of the mad Caliph Hakim, to which attention 
was directed in an earlier part of this volume.^ Egypt 
came in for her full share of suffering. Unhappily the 
Church was in a deplorable condition at the time, owing 
to quarrels among the clergy. One of these quarrels 
brought about the interference of the government, and so 
precipitated the persecution. John, a priest of Abunefer, 
a village near the monastery of St. Macarius, who had 
already paid for his ambition when he was seeking a 
bishopric, by being thrown into a pit by an angry prelate, 
had extracted a promise from the patriarch Zacharias 
that he should receive appointment to another bishopric. 
Furious at the non-fulfilment of this promise, he appealed 
to El-Hakim. The caliph was only too glad to have an 
excuse for attacking the head of the Church in Egypt. 
He had Zacharias arrested, and, — as the story which the 
Arab historian Makrizi accepted, runs, — thrown into a 
den of lions, who were miraculously restrained from 

1 P. 244. 



THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE 601 



hurting him.-^ In the later years of Hakim, when his 
fanaticism of self -deification was ripe, his persecution of 
the Copts was very severe. All Christian services were 
silenced, except in the remoter monasteries ; there was a 
wholesale destruction of churches ; Christians were ordered 
to wear heavy crosses and were subjected to various 
humiliations. A little while before he was assassinated, 
Hakim changed his policy towards the Christians, 
and ordered the rebuilding of their churches, and 
the removal of the worst of their restrictions. This is 
attributed to the favourable impression he had received 
when visiting Zacharias in prison, and observing the 
deference that was shown to the little old man in shabby 
clothes. 

Zacharias died about the year 1012. He was suc- 
ceeded by Chenouda, a monk of St. Macarius, whose simony 
in the sale of bishoprics was worse than that of any of his 
predecessors. The patriarch acted on the theory that on the 
death of a bishop his personal property passed over to the 
Church. Since Hakim's decree of toleration and restitution 
the Copts had enjoyed rest from persecution by the govern- 
ment ; but now they were pillaged by their own patriarch, 
who practised both extortion and bribery, disgracing the 
free and peaceful times with corrupt Church government. 
Some mitigation of the evil was accomplished by a noble- 
man named Bekr. This generous reformer worked for the 
relief of the bishops. To that end he promised to pay to 
Alexandria the customary dues of the clergy ^ — which 
were made up out of the bishops' fines on appointment 
— if the bishops in turn would undertake to give up their 
exactions. The bishops demurred, and Chenouda after sign- 
ing tore up the document on which the terms of this offer 
were set forth. A scene of confusion followed. In the end 
Chenouda ordered Bekr to be arrested and publicly beaten. 

This disgraceful patriarch dying in the year 1047 was 

^ Neale magnanimously believes the story, although the miracle was for 
the benefit of a heretic, Patriarchate of Alexandria, vol. ii. p. 204. 
2 See p. 597. 



G02 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



succeeded by a reforming patriarch, Christobulus, who built 
new churches, conducted ordinations of many bishops, laid 
down and exacted rules of discipline, — mostly concerning 
the rubric, — and travelled to and fro settling the affairs of 
the Church. He much reduced the sale of offices, but 
could not abolish the scandalous practice. A fresh outbreak 
of persecution took place in the time of Christobulus, 
and orders went forth for the destruction of churches and 
the seizure of their treasures. But these orders were only 
partially executed. The Fatimite caliphs were now very 
weak, and the government fell more and more into the 
hands of their viziers. The situation was an Oriental 
counterpart of that of France under the Merovingian 
kings, when the affairs of the State were administered by 
the mayors of the palace. There was a quarrel between 
the Turks and the negro slaves, during which the rioters 
behaved as genuine barbarians, ravaging the country, 
scattering and destroying books and works of art. Many 
of these treasures from palaces and monasteries fell into 
the hands of the Berbers, who tore off the bindings of 
books to make slippers out of them. In desperation the 
caliph sent for the victorious General Bedr-el-Jamal and 
made him dictator in order to restore order. This one 
capable man of his time, though of course a Mussulman, 
even settled a quarrel in the Church. 



CHAPTEE IV 



THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 

(a) Abu Salih, Churches of Egypt {ISth. century); Makrizi, History 
of the Copts {I4:ih. century) ; Shamse-en-din, Historie d'^gypte 
(16th century) ; Memoires de M. de Maillet (17th century) ; 
Renaudot, Historia Patriarcharum Alexandrinorum (18th 
century). 

(6) Lane, Modern Egyptians, 5th edit., 1871 ; De la Jonguiere, 
Hist, de V Empire Ottoman, 2nd edit., 1877; Butler, Coptic 
Churches of Egypt, 1884 ; Sir W. Muir, The Mameluke or 
Slave Dynasty of Egypt, 1896 ; Butcher, History of the Church 
in Egypt, 1897 ; Kyriakos, Geschichte, vol. iii., Ger. trans., 
1898; Neale, Patriarchate of Alexandria; Lane Poole, 
Egypt in the Middle Ages, 1901 ; Fortesque, The Orthodox 
Eastern Church, 1907. 

The rise of the Turkish power brought trouble to the 
Copts in common with Eastern Christians of other races. 
At first the Turks appeared as mercenaries of the Arabs, 
serving under Arabian caliphs. But gradually their genius 
for war carried them to the front, till at length Turkish 
sultans usurped the authority of the caliphate. As early 
as the eleventh century a band of rebel Turks robbed 
the monasteries of the Thebaid and murdered many of 
the monks. The power of the Fatimite dynasty was now 
nearly extinct, and the Egyptian governors were appointed 
by the soldiers without any reference to the caliph. When 
the Seleucid Turks were supreme over the East, the ill- 
treatment of the pilgrims at Jerusalem led to the interfer- 
ence of Western Europe, and so provoked the Crusades. 
The result, while in many respects disappointing, brought 
some relief to the Greek and Syrian Christians. The 

603 



604 THE CREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



progress of the Turks was arrested ; the doom of 
Constantinople was postponed ; Jerusalem was ruled by 
a Christian king for nearly a century, and Syria by 
Christian princes more or less for two hundred years. But 
all this brought no advantage to the Copts. In regard to 
the pilgrimages they were even worse off than before. 
Hitherto, while they had to take their chance of rough 
treatment equally with other Christians, the Copts 
had also free access to the holy sites, since Islam was 
scornfully indifferent to the rivalry of the Christian sects. 
But when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Latins, 
although the masters of the city were graciously willing to 
admit a comparative orthodoxy in the creed of the Greek 
Church, in common with that Church they treated the 
Monophysite Copts as heretics, and forbade them access to 
the Holy City. Thus "Jerusalem delivered" was barred 
against the national Church of Egypt by the Christian 
powers of Europe. The Copts had to wait for the recovery 
of Palestine by the Saracens before they could renew their 
pilgrimages to the tomb of Christ. 

The Coptic patriarch at the time of the first Crusade 
was Chail iv., who had signed a document promising to 
abolish simony and renounce certain irksome claims of his 
predecessors, as a condition of his appointment when a 
monk in a convent near Sinjara. No sooner was he in 
power than he repudiated his pledge, threatening excom- 
munication on any one who should bring it up against him. 
He even procured a synod's sentence of excommunication 
against Chenouda, the bishop of Misr, who had taken the 
lead in the simony question. It cannot but strike us as 
deplorable that, when the Crusades were beginning in a 
passion of religious enthusiasm, and when the Christians of 
the West were opening up long- closed communications 
with the East, the Coptic Church in Egypt should be 
represented by so unworthy a patriarch as this Chail. 

The policy of the Crusaders revived for a time the 
flickering flame of the Melchite patriarchate, which was 
then held by Cyril, a prelate who was celebrated both as a 



THE TUKKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 605 

physician and as an author. This ecclesiastic hoped great 
things from the victories of the Crusaders ; but he was 
grievously disappointed. Unlike the neighbouring province 
of Syria, Egypt was never wrested from the Saracen power. 
The Fatimite caliphs were no friends to the Turkish rule, and 
when they heard of the approach of the first Crusade they 
tried to make terms with the invaders from the West. But 
the situation was complicated by the fact that in a period 
of temporary weakness among the Turks, after the reign of 
the three strong sultans who had established the Seleucid 
dynasty, the Fatimites had recovered Jerusalem. When 
they perceived that the Crusaders were enemies of all 
Islam, and not only foes of the Turks, they were unable to 
proceed with their negotiations. They, too, were put on the 
defensive, and the fall of Jerusalem was a great blow to 
them, while it brought no relief to their Christian subjects 
in Egypt. At the same time Cyril was alarmed for his 
ecclesiastical prestige, on learning that Baldwin had obtained 
a papal bull granting all new conquests from the infidels 
to the patriarchate of Jerusalem — now a schismatic Latin 
patriarchate. Since Egypt was never conquered by the 
Crusaders, however, this act of Eoman usurpation did not 
really affect him. Meanwhile, although there were inva- 
sions of Egypt by the Crusaders, since they were not able 
to conquer the country, the native Christians gained nothing 
by them. 

The feeble Fatimite dynasty, which had recovered its 
power temporarily at the end of the tenth century, declined 
in the second half of the next century. Aded, the 
last caliph of this line, saw his dominions ravaged, 
both by the Turks and by the Kurds imder Shawer, 
who burnt Babylon — with what consequences to the 
Christians we do not know (a.d. 1168), and overrun 
more than once by Amaric, the Christian King of Jeru- 
salem. On the death of Aded in the year 1171, the 
famous Saladin succeeded to the government of Egypt, 
with the title of sultan, which he held under the caliph 
of Bagdad, and no Fatimite caliph was appointed. But 



606 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



a shadowy caliphate of the Abbasidse line was now restored 
for the sake of appearances. 

About this time the Coptic Church was disturbed by a 
controversy concerning the confessional, a glance at which 
throws some light on its customs and life, and so affords 
a relief from the dreary succession of quarrels concern- 
ing episcopal appointments and fines and exactions that 
occupies too much of the history. There had grown up 
a strange custom of confessing to a censer. The censer that 
used to be swung in connection with the pronunciation of 
absolution had been taken by itself and placed in the corner 
of a room, for the penitent to make his confession before it in 
private without the aid of any priest. There are two ways 
of regarding this curious practice. It may be looked upon 
as a protest against the confessional, an effort to get free of 
the priestly interference with the liberty of the laity of 
which that institution is the most powerful instrument. 
Here was an expedient by means of which the penitent 
could dispense with the priest. Considered in this way 
the irregularity was indicative of a revolt against sacer- 
dotalism, an anticipation of the great Protestant idea that 
Luther expounds in his tractate on Christian Liberty — 
" the priesthood of all Christians." But, in view of the 
stagnation and superstition of the times in the Eastern 
Churches, we cannot press this point. The presence of the 
censer is too suspiciously indicative of a magical element 
in religion, as though this material object with its ascending 
smoke were credited with performing the high office of 
priestly intercession. One grave reason offered for the 
practice was the notoriously bad character of many of the 
priests. Meanwhile there was this basis for the supersti- 
tion of the censer, that in the regular services the incense 
burnt at the commencement of the liturgy was supposed to 
be in some mysterious way connected with the remission of 
sins of the congregation through their private confession. 
The practice was opposed by Mark the son of Kunbar, a 
priest who preached earnestly against it. His opponents 
got him excommunicated on a charge of having dismissed 



THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 607 

his wife and induced some one else to marry her. Still 
he preached, however, insisting on the necessity of con- 
fessing to a priest in order to obtain absolution. The people 
flocked to him in crowds, both to hear his sermons and to 
confess to him. The matter became so serious that a synod, 
said to have consisted of sixty bishops, met and pronounced 
against him. He was deposed, and then he appealed to 
the Moslem power, with a memorial stating that he had 
preached nothing contrary to canonical authority or the 
teaching of the Fathers, and demanding a fak trial accord- 
ing to the rules of the Church. Such a reference to the 
government is most significant, since it shows that in spite 
of so much that was oppressive, the Christians recognised 
in it the centre of law and order. The sequel confirms 
the reasonableness of this view. The civil authorities 
commanded the patriarch to institute a trial; but he 
refused, for the authorities of the Church as represented 
by the episcopate were on his side. Michael of Damietta 
took the lead in supporting the novel custom, writing a 
short treatise on it which is still in existence. The next 
stage was an appeal to Michael L, the J acobite patriarch of 
Antioch, who wavered in his treatment of the question. 
At first he inclined to the view of the bishops, and was 
induced to regard Mark as a heretic ; but on learning 
more about the case he swung round to the opposite view, 
and supported the practice of confession to the priest. 
Both this patriarch and the learned writer Bar Salibi 
wrote on the necessity of that practice. Mark, however, 
found little comfort in his own Church, since the bishops 
were still opposed to him. He joined the Greek Church, 
returned to the Coptic, went over to the Greek communion 
again, and yet again sought to be readmitted to his own 
old Church. It is not surprising that the Coptic patriarch 
refused to have any more to do with him. 

It is curious to find Neale championing Mark as 
"the English Chillingworth." The outstanding feature 
of the whole story is the fact that the bishops were 
supporting the novel practice, which, however materialistic 



608 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



and superstitious we may hold it to be, was nevertheless 
partially Protestant in its opposition to sacerdotaKsm, 
while on this occasion the protestor stood for the rights 
and powers of the priests. Such a situation is unique in 
history. It is tantalising to know too little of the motives 
of the chief actors in it for adequate judgment of its true 
inwardness. When bishops champion the rights of the 
laity against the priestly claims of presbyters, the inference 
is that since some of them are men of culture and reading, 
while the lower clergy are steeped in ignorance, the reason 
is disciplinary rather than doctrinal. The ignorant priests 
were not fit to be trusted with the machinery of the 
confessional. Some of them were men of no character. 
Discerning bishops might well discourage confession to 
such men, because they saw that it was safer for simple 
souls to confess to the smoking censer, which, if it could 
not give ghostly advice, was at least free from any 
corrupting influence. 

In the earlier part of his reign Saladin removed 
the Christians from public offices and laid upon them 
many vexatious restrictions, such as the prohibition of 
bell-ringing, crosses on churches, procession on Palm 
Sundays, chanting of services in a loud voice. He 
directed the churches to be painted black. Nevertheless, 
he was a large-minded, strong ruler, who secured good 
order in his dominions. If the Christians were shut out of 
office they were also spared the fines that his mean prede- 
cessors had too often attached to public functions, so that 
it really seemed that the posts were allotted for the sake 
of the backshish. In his later days Saladin readmitted 
Christians to the government service. It is not surprising 
that under these circumstances there were some Christians 
who apostasised to Mohammedanism, favour drawing them 
where persecution had failed to drive. But when a certain 
monk who had joined Islam returned to his monastery, a 
soldier was sent with orders to put him to death unless he 
came back to the religion of the Prophet. This was quite 
in accordance with Mussulman law. A Christian might 



THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 609 

remain a Christian, but when once he had become a 
Mohammedan he came under the stern rule of Islam, 
which exacts the death penalty on all who forsake the 
creed of the Prophet. The miserable waverer not only 
yielded to the threat of death, but he even lodged with 
the government information of treasure which he said the 
monastery that had given him an asylum contained. Very 
little was found there, and that little was returned when 
the whole story was known. 

The later Crusades had hardly any more effect on the 
Church in Egypt than had been the case with the 
earlier expeditions from Europe for the recovery of the 
Holy Land. The siege of Damietta (a.d. 1218) and the 
ill-fated expedition of St. Louis (a.d. 1248-1250) were 
wholly affairs of the Latin Church with which the Copts 
had no concern. Had these wars been successful in the 
end, they would have been free from the yoke of Islam 
only to face the demand of submission to Eome. Mean- 
while the Saracen rule of Egypt was more just and 
enlightened than any form of government that the Copts 
had ever known before. There was therefore little tempta- 
tion for them to give much material aid to the Crusaders. 
Unhappily their own internal history at this time does 
not furnish us with an edifying record. Quarrels on the 
election of patriarchs, and charges of simony against 
patriarchs when in power, are the chief items that break 
the monotony of the narrative. The Sultan Kamel 
refused an offer of heavy bribes to favour the election of 
a candidate for the patriarchate. He was so pleased with 
a visit he paid to the monastery of St. Macarius that he 
richly endowed it and granted its monks several privileges. 
On the other hand, the patriarch Cyril, who was appointed 
during his reign and very affably received by the sultan, 
turned out to be a cause of great trouble in the Church. 
He was guilty of outrageous simony — the typical offence 
of the Eygptian patriarchs of which we hear again and 
again in successive ages. There had been a gap in the 
patriarchate which had resulted in many vacancies in the 
39 



610 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



bishoprics. Cyril ordained forty bishops, and accumulated 
a very considerable sum of money by means of the large 
fees he exacted from them. At length he was arrested on 
charges of malversation of funds and sent to Cairo. The 
bishops now proposed terms to him. He should give up 
the practice of simony, and have his authority limited in 
several directions ; but he was liberated by favour of the 
sultan without agreeing to these terms. Subsequently, since 
fresh complaints were brought forward, fourteen bishops of 
Lower Egypt met at Cairo and induced him to consent to 
a number of reforms, among which was the requirement 
that the consecration of bishops and priests should be 
performed free of charge. But the quarrel went on. 
Cyril was repeatedly accused to the sultan and repeatedly 
fined. Yet so great was the influence of his office that he 
was able to raise all the funds requisite to satisfy the 
government. He held the control of the mighty engine of 
ordination. If he refused to ordain bishops the episcopate 
would die out, and with it the priesthood, and with 
that the Church itself. The sacerdotal system derived 
all its authority primarily from the patriarch. When 
religion depends on the sacraments, the sacraments on the 
priests, the priests on the bishops, and the bishops on the 
patriarch — without whose concurrence their ordination is 
uncanonical, this supreme prelate holds the key of the situa- 
tion. He can exact his own terms before consenting to 
ordain. Thus he can obtain sufficient money to bribe the 
civil authority when that authority, the only power above 
him, is in^^oked to interfere with his tyrannical practices. In 
this way Cyril was able to continue his disgraceful practices 
till his death relieved the Copts of the incubus of his 
patriarchal rule (a.d. 1243). 

The subsequent story of the Coptic Church becomes 
less and less interesting, except at one or two points, where 
its monotony is broken by the emergence of a striking per- 
sonality or by the occurrence of events in the outer world. 
The original sources for the history are here very meagre, 
so that we have not materials from which to come 



THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT 611 

to an adequate knowledge of the succession of events. 
But what is preserved is enough to show that we do not 
lose much for lack of fuller information. We are now 
approaching the age of the Mamelukes. These were at 
first barbarous slaves who pushed to the front and seized 
the power of government. Their rule began in the 
year 1260, and it came as an improvement on the 
government of the degenerate sultans and caliphs. They 
elevated two successive nominal caliphs of the Abbasidse 
line, who were mere shadows. After the year 1382 
a Circassian dynasty of Mamelukes ruled, without that 
pretence of respect for antiquarianism. The Mamelukes 
have been described as "jealous, cruel, suspicious, avari- 
cious." ^ But they lightened taxes and executed some 
public works. These rulers of an alien race held them- 
selves aloof both from the Arabs and from the Copts. 
They remained in power till the. year 1517. It was 
really an oligarchical government with nominal boy sultans, 
carried on in the midst of plots and assassinations. Mean- 
while great events were being transacted in Eastern Europe. 
But the establishment of the Ottoman rule and the fall of 
Constantinople had no appreciable effect on the fortunes of 
the Copts. They had been long under the yoke of Islam, 
and the change of masters from one dynasty to another, 
and even from race to race, made little difference to their 
subject condition. Just and merciful governors left them 
at peace with their guaranteed rights ; vicious and ini- 
quitous rulers preyed upon them and persecuted them. 
The variations of treatment depended more on the personnel 
of the authorities than on the name and source of the 
government. 

Within the Church itself the movement of the times 
brought two successive influences from without to bear on 
it. These were the Uniat propaganda associated with the 
council of Florence and the Protestant ideas that Cyril 
Lucar introduced after his travels in the West. 

The Coptic Church had but little active concern with 

* Sir W. Muir, The Mamelukes, etc., p. 66. 



612 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

the efforts of men in the East to come to terms with the 
Western Church. The origin and motives of these efforts 
were not rehgious or even ecclesiastical; they were purely 
political. John Palaeologus and other emperors saw the 
desperate need of a European alliance if the onward march 
of the Turks was to be stayed and the last remnants of the 
Byzantine Empire preserved. What interest had that 
policy for the Copts, already subject to Islam and not of 
the Greek communion ? Nevertheless the Coptic patriarch, 
John XI., sent John the abbot of St. Antony as a delegate 
to Florence. He did not arrive till after the Greeks had 
left. This will account for the fact that the council 
decreed union with the Coptic Church. But it had 
previously effected a nominal union with the Greek 
Church. And yet these two Churches mutually anathemat- 
ised one another. The consequences would have been 
interesting if there had been any reality in the acts of 
union. But since, in point of fact, they were never 
accepted by either of the Eastern Churches, they can 
only be regarded as pious pronouncements in the region 
of idea. Metrophanes, the metropolitan of Cyzicum, 
whom the emperor made patriarch of Constantinople 
on account of his staunch support of the union of the 
Greeks and Latins, was denounced by the three other Greek 
patriarchs as a " matricide " — for killing his " mother 
Church." The union with the Jacobites was no more 
real, and the Copts still remained in separation from the 
Latin as well as from the Greek Churches. 

The story of Cyril Lucar belongs to the Greek 
Church, and therefore it has been given earlier in this 
volume.^ We are accustomed to think of him as the 
patriarch of Alexandria before he was translated to the 
patriarchate of Constantinople. But he was the Melchite 
patriarch, the representative of the alien Greek communion 
with its few adherents in Alexandria and its neighbour- 
hood. Still it is a fact of significance in regard to 
Christianity in Egypt, that although not a member of the 

» See pp. 309 ff. 



THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN P:GYPT 61:') 



national Church, Cyril introduced the new learning into 
that country. He appeared as a vigorous opponent of 
Rome, and many who had no notion of what Protestantism 
was saying and doing in the West were ready to welcome 
a man who shared the general aversion to union with the 
papacy that was felt by the Greek Church in Egypt. 
There can be no doubt, however, that he was strongly 
imbued with Protestantism. A modern Roman Catholic 
historian says of him, "He was a Protestant who 
formed a party of Calvinists in his Church, and his 
opinions were afterwards condemned by four councils." ^ 
Cyril influenced a group of men in Alexandria of his own 
Church in the direction of Protestantism. But the time 
was peculiarly unpropitious for the spread of similar 
influences among the Copts, because they were still in a 
measure compromised by the nominal union with Rome 
that had been pronounced at Florence. 

By the beginning of the nineteenth century the national 
Church in Egypt was in a feeble condition, at the very 
ebb of its fortunes ; and the Melchite Church was even 
lower, being reduced to little else than a nominal patri- 
archate. Then came Peter vii., a good man who was 
anxious to improve matters. In the year 1833, Curzon 
visited Egypt in search of manuscripts that he hoped to 
find among the monasteries. He was followed by Arch- 
deacon Tattam, who roused some interest in England by 
his accounts of the ignorant and depressed condition of 
the Coptic Christians, the first consequence of which was 
an issue of an Arabic version of the four Gospels by the 
British and Foreign Bible Society. In the year 1840 the 
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge produced an 
Arabic translation of old Egyptian commentaries. About 
the same time Grimshaw, an English clergyman, went to 
Egypt and helped to start a school that was conducted by 
a Mr. Lieder for the training of priests. This school met 
with little encouragement. Peter died in the year 1854, 
and was succeeded by Cyril, at first an active reformer of 

* Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, p. 264. 



614 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the Coptic Church. This enhghtened patriarch established 
schools for girls as well as for boys, rebuilt the cathedral, 
destroyed pictures as idols, gathered a new council to 
help him, and established a college at Cairo in charge 
of Philotheus, an able, learned man. Unfortunately the 
patriarch would not give the principal a free hand, and, 
being dissatisfied with his teaching, broke the college up. 

In the year 1890 a society of young laymen was 
constituted for reforming the Coptic Church, and it issued 
pamphlets in Arabic. Then Cyril got up a rival society 
called " the Orthodox." A public meeting was called to 
meet Cyril, which so alarmed the patriarch that he put 
himself under the protection of the police. His next step 
was to call a synod, at which he gave the bishops a state- 
ment requiring them to sign it and read it in their 
churches. He would reform the Church ; but this must 
be in his own way. Of course there was great dissatisfac- 
tion at such high-handed proceedings, and the Khedive 
Tewfic intervened. But Cyril would not listen to persuasion. 
A new council was elected, in which Athanasius of Sanabu, 
a bishop of the young reform party, was a member. Cyril 
excommunicated him. Such conduct was unbearable, and 
the reformers got Cyril banished to Nitria. Meanwhile 
every effort was made to induce him to withdraw the 
excommunication of Athanasius, but in vain. At last 
Athanasius and his supporters simply ignored it. Then 
came a reaction from the older people ; Cyril was recalled, 
and his return was a triumph, although he had proved 
himself an obstinate, tyrannical prelate. Still there was 
progress in spite of these difficulties. The stagnation of 
the Coptic Church has been largely due to the ignorance 
of the priests. There is now some progress towards an 
education of candidates for the ministry, and therefore 
hope of better times to come. The Copts look to England 
for sympathy, and rejoice in the English rule of Egypt. 
They know that if England had not stepped in to suppress 
the rebellion of Arabi Pasha they would have been massacred 
wholesale. 



CHAPTEE V 



ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 

(a) Rufinus ; Socrates ; Sozomen ; Theodoret ; Nicephorus ; Zonaras ; 
Cedreniis ; John of Ephesus ; Arabian authorities ; Alvarez 
(trans, by Lord Stanley of Alderley) ; Tellez, Historia 
de Mhiopia, 1660 ; Ludolphus, History of Ethiopia, 1684 ; 
Geddes, Church History of Ethiopia, 1 696 ; Le Quien, Oriens. 
Christ, ii., 1741 ; Bruce, Travels, 1768-73. 

(h) Reynolds in Smith's Diet, of Christian Biography, art. " Ethiopian 
Church"; Wright, Christianity in Arabia, 1855; Hotten, 
Abyssinia Described, 1868 ; Portal, My Mission to Abyssinia, 
1892 ; Duchesne, Les Missions Chretiens au sud de Vempire 
Bomain, 1896 ; Lauribar, Douze ans en Abysinnie, 1898. 

Abyssinian Christianity is a Judaistic, Monophysite form 
of religion which has been corrupted in the course of ages 
during its long severance from the influences of the rest 
of Christendom. It is naturally most nearly associated 
with the Coptic Church, because it derived its origin from 
Egypt, agreed with the Copts in following Dioscurus in his 
opposition to the decrees of Chalcedon, formerly owned 
allegiance to the patriarch of Alexandria, and for a long 
while kept in touch with the Christians of Egypt. Between 
Abyssinia, known as Ethiopia in early times, and Egypt was 
Nubia, for long an independent Christian nation. When 
that country was conquered by the Arabs and its Chris- 
tianity simply wiped out, Abyssinia was cut off from all 
direct relations with Egypt. There was still the Eed Sea 
route, the route by which the gospel reached Abyssinia 
in the first instance. But when Egypt was subject to the 
Mussulman rule the Copts had neither the heart nor the 
power to use it in order to keep in touch with a remote 

615 



616 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 

nation in the south with which they were no longer 
directly connected. 

Like the name " India," the word " Ethiopia " is used 
in the vaguest way by ancient writers. There can be no 
doubt that these two names sometimes overlap. The land 
on both sides of the Eed Sea to the south was known as 
Ethiopia. The Queen of Sheba may have come either 
from Asia or from Africa. But the Ethiopia of which we 
know in Christian times was undoubtedly in Africa. The 
extent of land to which the name is given is never defined, 
but we may understand it as roughly corresponding to 
our modem Abyssinia, a country the limits of which 
are not determined in the present day. Abyssinia is a 
form of the name given by the Arabs {Habesh, meaning 
"mixture," "confusion," because of the mixed character of 
the peoples inhabiting it) ; but the Abyssinians still call 
themselves " Ethiopians " {Itiopyavan) and their country 
"Ethiopia" {Itiopia). The Jewish character of some of 
the customs of the Abyssinians has given rise to the con- 
jecture that these people were influenced by the Jews 
before they became Christian ; but the fact that some of 
those customs, such as circumcision, distinctions of clean 
and imclean food, and the levirate marriage, are much more 
widespread, being found more or less in Arabia and in 
other parts of Africa, tends to destroy the grounds of this 
hypothesis. Dr. Eeynolds suggested that the observance of 
the seventh-day Sabbath in Abyssinia may be traced to 
Judaic influences in ancient Christianity.^ Still, the number 
of coincidences creates a cumulative argument in favour of 
the spread of early Jewish ideas. There can be no doubt 
that the diaspora was immensely influential for two or 
three centuries. Its missionary activity has been unfairly 
disregarded because thrown into the shade by the greater 
activity of the Christian evangelism that both absorbed 
and superseded it. The story of the Ethiopian eunuch in 
Acts points to the early introduction of Christianity into 
Africa. But the name " Candace " which is there given to 

1 Smith, Die. Christ. Biog. vol. ii. p. 234*. 



ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 



617 



the queen is not found in Ethiopia proper. It is known to 
have been the title of a succession of queens at Meroe on 
the Upper Nile (half-way between Berber and Kartoum) ; 
so that the Ethiopian eunuch would be a Nubian from 
the Soudan. Christianity could reach Ethiopia more 
easily from the coast ; and that it did so in early times is 
implied by a remark of Origen : " We are not told that the 
gospel has been preached among all the Ethiopians." ^ 

We come to the fourth century for the effective intro- 
duction of Christianity into Ethiopia. Seeing that Eufinus, 
who is our earliest authority, tells us that he obtained his 
information direct from one of the two young men whose 
story he gives, we may consider that we have here come 
upon an unusually good historical source.^ The story is 
repeated with some variations by the Greek historians.^ 
It is as follows : Meropius, a philosopher from Tyre, took 
two young relations — perhaps sons — named Frumentius 
and vEdesius on a voyage of exploration in the direction of 
" India." On the way they put into a port by the African 
side of the Eed Sea for water. The people of these parts 
had recently revolted from Eome, and they murdered 
Meropius and the whole of the ship's crew, but spared 
the two young men, touched with pity for them when they 
discovered them apart from their companions quietly seated 
reading under a tree. They sent them to their king, who 
made ^desius his cupbearer and Frumentius the keeper of 
his rolls. On the death of the king the young men were 
set at liberty ; but at the request of the queen, who was now 
regent, they consented to remain and help in the administra- 
tion of the government during the minority of her son. 
Frumentius, who was the abler and more energetic of the 
two, now sought out the Christians among the Eoman 
merchants in the country, and gave them authority and 
advice for building churches. As yet this was only a 
movement among the foreign residents. But here was 

^ Origen, Comment, on Matt. xxiv. 9. 

* Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. i. 9. 

• Socrates, i. 19 ; Sozomen ii. 24 ; Theodoret, i. 23. 



61.8 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



the seed of the great missionary work that was destin'^d 
to make the name of Frumentius famous in Christian 
history. In spite of the queen's entreaties, the two 
brothers left the country when the young prince was 
old enough to undertake the responsibilities of government. 
They must both have been of an earnest religious character, 
for ^desius became a presbyter at Tyre, where Eufinus 
received the story from his own lips, while Frumentius 
went to Alexandria in order to urge its bishop, who was 
no other than the great Athanasius, to appoint a bishop 
for undertaking missionary work in Ethiopia. Athanasius 
brought the matter before a synod, and there addressing 
Frumentius, said, " What other man shall we find such as 
thou art, in whom is the spirit of God, as He is in thee, 
who will be able to discharge these duties ? " Accordingly 
Frumentius was ordained bishop of Auxume in Ethiopia. 
He was called Ahha Salama (" Father of Peace "), a title 
borne by his successors down to the present day. This 
story is confirmed and added to by the literature of the 
Ethiopian Church — its annals, liturgy, and poetry. 

Subsequently Constantius wrote to the King of Ethiopia 
urging him to replace Frumentius by Theophilus, an Arian, 
who was under George, the Arian bishop imposed on the 
Church of Alexandria ; but his letter does not appear to 
have had any effect, and Arianism did not penetrate into 
the Ethiopian Church. After this we know little of the 
history of that Church for a long time. But a number of 
saints are celebrated in Ethiopian poetry, among whom is 
Aragawi, who is confused with the archangel Michael, the 
patron of the Church and the kingdom, to whom the twelfth 
day in every month is consecrated. 

There is another story of the conversion of Ethiopia, 
told by Nicephorus, corresponding to which is the account 
in John of Ephesus. According to this story, the Emperor 
of Ethiopia vowed that if he conquered the Homerites of 
the Eed Sea coast he would embrace Christianity, and that 
having obtained the victory he appealed to Justinian for 
help in carrying out his vow, when the Eoman emperor 



ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 



619 



responded by sending him bishops. The Monophysite 
character of Ethiopian Christianity is enough to contra- 
dict this story, and there are other improbabihties con- 
nected with it. We must always associate Abyssinian 
Christianity with the Coptic, not with the Byzantine type 
About this time there was a persecution of Christians in 
South Arabia under Dunaan, a Jewish usurper, and among 
the martyrs was Aretas, who had come from Auzume as 
governor of the province. He and his wife and a 
number of other Christians were cruelly martyred in a 
pit of fire. 

Monasticism was introduced into Ethiopia in the fifth 
century, and it has remained as one of the institutions 
of Abyssinian Christianity down to the present day. There 
is a large number of monks and nuns in the country, 
as well as married priests after the manner of the Oriental 
Churches generally. The Ethiopic canon of Scriptures 
is of curious interest. It contains several books not in- 
cluded in the canons of the Eastern and Western Catholic 
Churches. The Old Testament has all the Septuagint 
books except Maccabees, together with the Books of Enoch, 
Jubilees, iv. Ezra, and other apocryphal writings, and the 
New Testament books are reckoned at thirty-five — eight 
books of the Canon Law (called Sinodos) being added to 
the usual twenty-seven. 

After the sixth century Abyssinia was almost entirely 
lost to view for nearly a thousand years — a section of 
Christendom cut off from the main body of the Church by 
the intruding Mohammedan power. For a long time, how- 
ever, it contrived to get its metropolitan from Egypt, 
and so acknowledged its ecclesiastical relationship to the 
Coptic patriarchate of Alexandria. The canon required 
twelve bishops for the consecration of a metropolitan ; 
but there were only seven in Abyssinia. In the twelfth 
century the king requested that more might be appointed, 
and the Mohammedan government approved of the request ; 
but the patriarch Gabriel refused it — an impolitic action 
which resulted in Abyssinia taking things into its own 



620 



THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



hands and electing its own metropolitan. After that, 
although the patriarchate of Alexandria might be 
nominally allowed to extend to Abyssinia, the Abyssinians 
really had an independent Church. 

In the meantime we witness the sad spectacle of the 
utter vanishing of Christianity from Nubia, where once it 
had been strong and flourishing. For many years this 
region of the Soudan had existed as a Christian kingdom, 
which refused to admit the Arab suzerainty. Ahmed, the son 
of Solaim, who went to Nubia as an ambassador from the 
Moslem ruler, tells how he " passed through nearly thirty 
towns with fine houses, monasteries, numberless palm 
groves, vineyards, gardens and wide-spreading fields, 
besides herds of camels of great beauty and breeding"^ 
Kartoum was then adorned with magnificent buildings 
and great houses. Its churches were enriched with 
gold, and the whole city was beautified with gardens.^ 
The King of Nubia used to invite the bishops to join his 
wise men in discussing with him the affairs of the 
kingdom ; in fact, he had a sort of House of Lords, 
consisting of peers temporal and spiritual. Ahmed him- 
self was courteously received by King George, who, he 
says, took the Moslems with him in a procession on a 
festival day. But in course of time this happy relation- 
ship, which could only exist so long as the Egyptian 
government was not strong enough to break it up, came 
to an end. The King of Nubia had always declined to admit 
the suzerainty of the sultan. He persistently refused the 
tribute of slaves which the Mohammedan power demanded 
from him. When that power was sufficiently established, 
it punished the independence of Nubia by completely over- 
running and conquering the country and effectually stamp- 
ing out Christianity. The result is seen to-day in the 
barbarous Mohammedanism of the tribes of the Soudan, 
whose ancestors had constituted a highly civilised Christian 
kingdom. 

Quatremere in Butclier, Hist, of Church in Egypt, vol. ii. p. 3. 
« Ibid. p. 4. 



ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 



621 



The destruction of the Christian kingdom of Nubia 
was the chief cause of the isolation of Abyssinia for many 
centuries. That country only comes to light again in the 
sixteenth century, owing to the enterprising spirit of 
the Portuguese. It would have been infinitely better for 
the unhappy land if it had been left to its isolation and 
obscurity. The Portuguese brought in their train bigoted 
emissaries of the Church of Eome, w^ho, in accordance with 
the custom of the times, resorted to violence and cruelty in 
attempting to force a nation that they regarded as heretical 
into the papal mould. But .the first interchange of com- 
munications was civil and friendly. Prince Henry of 
Portugal, having heard semi-fabulous tales of Prester John 
in a mysterious " India," sent two ambassadors, Pedro de 
Corvilhaa and Alphonso de Payva, to the Christian sovereign 
of Abyssinia. Alphonso died ; but Pedro was adopted 
by the Abyssinian nation, highly honoured by the king, 
and married into a high Abyssinian family. Still he kept 
up communications with Portugal. Early in the sixteenth 
century the Queen Helena, who was then regent for her 
son, a child of eleven years, sent Matthew, an Armenian 
merchant of ability and trustworthiness, on an embassy to 
the King of Portugal, asking him to enter into an alliance 
with her in order to resist the Turks, and proposing an 
intermarriage between the two royal families. Matthew 
went first to Goa in India and thence round by the Cape 
to Portugal, encountering many difficulties and discourage- 
ments on his journey. There he gained his end so far as 
to secure a Portuguese embassy to return with him to 
Abyssinia. The chaplain of this embassy was Alvarez, 
who has left us a graphic account of his own experiences 
and observations concerning the country and people to which 
he was sent. His narrative is held by some critics not 
to be entirely reliable ; but, after making allowance for 
inaccuracies, we still have here a mass of information 
about Abyssinia, including what is especially valuable 
for our present purposes, light on the practices of the 
Church. Thus at length the curtain is raised, and again 



622 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



after centuries of obscurity we are able to contemplate 
Abyssinian Christianity.^ 

Alvarez bears witness to the lingering of Jewish 
customs among the Abyssinians. Thus he says that the 
monks rest for eight days after Easter — a custom which 
we may regard as parallel to the passover holiday ; they 
partially observe the Saturday Sabbath, and they con- 
tinued to practise circumcision ; but the latter custom, we 
have seen, was too widespread to be attributed to the 
influence of Judaism. The travellers saw a great number 
of monasteries and churches. Like the temple of Osiris 
at Abu-Simbel, some of the churches are entirely hewn out 
of the rock. One of these is as large as a cathedral, with 
well-wrought nave and aisles, vaulted-shaped roof, and 
square columns — all cut out of the solid rock. The 
monastery of Bisa has six other monasteries, each with a 
David at its head under the presiding Abba, and is very 
rich. It is said to number 3,000 monks, but Alvarez only 
saw 300. The monasteries are generally set on rocks and 
hilltops surrounded by woods. The churches all appear 
to be vaulted ; but they have straw roofs. There is only 
one altar in each church, in the chancel. Bells, or rather 
long, thin stone clappers, are in use. The services are 
conducted with chanting to no particular tune. There 
are prayers and psalms and one lesson, all shouted rather 
than intoned or merely read. The mass begins with a 
shout of Hallelujah, and concludes with a procession 
of four or five crosses, to an accompaniment of drums, 
cymbals, and incense, carried round the church quite 
thirty times. While the mass is proceeding, lighted 
candles are held up by those round the officiating priest. 
The shouting and singing are taken up by the people outside 
the church as well as by the congregation within. The 
communion is received by the laity as well as by the 
clergy in both kinds, the communicants after receiv- 

^ See Narrative of Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia during the Years 
1520-1527, by Father Francisco Alvarez (trans, by Lord Stanley of Alderley, 
Hakluyt Society). 



ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 



623 



ing the cup washing out their mouths with holy 
water and drinking it. Bread is blessed and dis- 
tributed at all the monasteries and churches on the Satur- 
day Sabbaths, on Sundays, and on feast days. The 
monks carry crosses before them when they walk abroad, 
and laymen have crosses on their backs. Alvarez says of 
the monks, " being thin and dry like wood, they appear to 
be men of a holy life. . . . The clothes which they wear 
are old yellow cotton stuffs, and they go barefooted." ^ 
The practice of polygamy, though not frequent, and though 
condemned by the Church to the extent of exclusion 
from the communion, was not otherwise prohibited. At 
one place, Barua, Alvarez found men with two and even 
with three wives. Here were two churches, that of 
St. Michael for men, and that of St. Peter and St. Paul 
for women. The same priests ministered to both churches. 
As in the East generally, the priests were not celibate, but 
if a priest lost his wife he might not marry a second time. 
The priesthood was mainly recruited from the families of 
the priests, who thus became virtually a caste. There 
were no schools or masters to prepare the candidates for 
orders, and the clergy taught the little that they knew 
themselves to their sons.^ 

At this time the Abyssinians were engaged in wars 
with the Turks, who invaded their country slaughtering 
many people, and destroying churches and monasteries. 
Ultimately the Portuguese came to the assistance of their 
fellow- Christians ; but it was long before the Turkish 
intrusion was effectually repelled. Then troubles broke 
out between the two Churches that were now represented 
in the country. King David prevailed on the catholicos 
of Abyssinia, Abuna Mark, who had become too old and infirm 
to administer the affairs of the Church, to consecrate a 
Portuguese, Joao Bermudez, in his place. In this way the 
Eoman Catholicism, to which the king was favourable, was 
represented in the head of Abyssinian Christianity. But 
this did not result in the surrender of the national Church 
1 Ihid. p. 16. « Ihid. p. 57. 



624 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



to the papacy. The pope made an attempt to secure that 
result through the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria. But 
this too failed. In the year 1600, an able Jesuit, Pedro 
Piaz, came as a Eoman missionary to Abyssinia. A few 
years later the King Socinios embraced the Catholic faith 
of the Two Natures after a public disputation on the 
subject in his presence. This was the first step towards 
submission to Eome. On the other hand, the Abuna Simon 
published a sentence of excommunication against all who 
affirmed that there were two natures in our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Thus the old Monophysite quarrel that had 
slumbered for centuries was rekindled in Abyssinia with 
regard to the ecclesiastical question of the supremacy of 
the pope. This led to civil war, in which the Abuna was 
killed — it is said screaming curses against his sovereign. 
The king issued a manifesto denouncing both the heretical 
tenets and the corrupt morals of his national Church. 
When the news of his submission to Eome reached Lisbon, 
Alphonso Menez was there consecrated patriarch of 
Ethiopia. He was welcomed by Socinios in February 
1626. The king then issued a proclamation commanding 
submission to the Eoman Catholic faith on pain of death. 
Churches were reconsecrated, clergy re-ordained, converts 
re-baptised, and the abohtion of circumcision and polygamy 
commanded. Again there was rebellion, followed by dis- 
order and bloodshed. But when resigning his throne to 
his son, Socinios issued a proclamatioL tolerating both the 
ancient and the new faiths.^ 

The most complete English account of the history of 
Abyssinia is to be found in Bruce's five fine quarto volumes 
on his travels in search of the sources of the Nile. From his 
own observation he is able to give us a detailed description of 
the country in the eighteenth century. " There is no country 
in the world," he says, " where there are so many churches 
as Abyssinia " ; ^ and he adds that every great man who 
dies thinks to atone for his misdeeds by building a church. 

1 See Bruce, Travels, vol. ii. pp. 265 ff. 
« Ihid. vol. iii. p. 313. 



ABYSSINIAN CHRISTIANITY 



625 



The king builds many. The churches are near running 
water for the sake of rites of puiification, and they are 
planted round with trees, so that " there is nothing adds 
so much to the beauty of the country as these churches 
and the plantations about them."^ They have thatched 
roofs, and they are surrounded by colonnades, the pillars con- 
sisting of trunks of cedar trees. In form they are round, 
and in the circular interior is a railed-off square, within 
which is a " holy of holies," only entered by the priests. 
The monks, according to Bruce, do not live in convents, 
but they occupy separate houses grouped roimd the 
churches. Bruce gives us little information as to the 
internal life of the Church in Abyssinia ; but he mentions 
a priest who told him he never believed that the elements 
in the Eucharist were converted by consecration into the 
real body and blood of Christ. This priest thought that to 
be the Eoman Catholic faith in contradistinction to the tenets 
of his own Church.^ In the Abyssinian Church, pictures, 
but not statues, are used as in other Eastern Churches. 
Many saints are venerated, and in some cases worshipped 
with extravagant adoration. 

In more recent years the country has been distracted 
by tribal wars and the contentions of rival claimants to 
the supreme power claimed by the Negus Negasti (king of 
kings), but only exercised by the stronger and more 
masterful of these suzerain lords. In the year 1829, 
missionaries went out from the English Church Missionary 
Society and were well received. Other missionaries followed, 
but, owing to the opposition of the priests, they were all 
obliged to leave the country in less than ten years. 

Still, the prospect is not unhopeful. English and Ameri- 
can missionary and educational work is spreading over 
Egypt and extending up the Valley of the Nile through 
Nubia. In course of time this may be expected to penetrate 
the Soudan till it joins hands with other missionary efforts 
in the interior of Africa. Then Abyssinia will be in closer 
touch with the modern movement, which is part of a 

^ Bruce, Travels, vol. iii. p. 314. 2 j^^^ 339^ 

40 



626 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES 



general endeavour to extend spiritual and intelligent 
Christianity. If this continues and is enlarged and 
becomes fruitful, we may yet hope to see the peoples 
of the ancient seats of Christianity reawakened and 
perhaps even enjoying some return of the vitality of their 
famous past. 



INDEX 



Abba Salama, 618. 
Abda, 344. 
Abgar, 295, 462 fif. 
Abraham, Mar, 489. 
Abu Bekr, 164 ff. 
Abyssinia, 296, 615 ff. 
Acacians, 70. 
Acephali, 113, 567. 
Acosmeti, 213. 
Adamantius Korais, 331. 
Addai, Doctrine of , 461. 
Adoptionism, 218. 
iEdesius, 617. 
Agallianos, 195. 
Aggai, 463. 
Albigenses, 228. 
Alexander of Alexandria, 42 fF. 
Alexander i., Tsar, 436. 

II., Tsar, 438 11". 
Alexandria, 58 ff., 87, 577 ff. 
Alexis, 413 ff. 
Alexius, 247. 
Alexius Angelus, 253. 
Alvarez, 621. 
Amphilochius, 280. 
Ampliilochius of Side, 107. 
Anchoritism, 148. 
Anna Comnenus, 281. 
Anne of Russia, 434. 
Anomoeans, 70. 
Anthony, St., 154. 
Anthropomorphists, 90. 
Antichrist, 444. 
Antioch, 14, 89. 
Aphraates, Homilies, 470, 482. 
Apollinarians, 79, 82, 110, 127. 
Apostles, traditional spheres, 16, 
note 2. 

Apostolical constitutions, 53,149,179. 
Arabia, 166 ff. 
Arcadius, 88. 

Architecture, Byzantine, 175 ff. 
„ Saracenic, 587, 



Ariadne, 110. 

Arianism, 41 ff., 58 ff., 68, 307, 561. 
Armenia, 217, 296. 
Armenian Church, 297, 540 ff. 
„ Massacres, 551. 
„ Versions, 542 f. 
Arsenius, 261, 324. 
Art, Byzantine, 174 ff. 

„ Gothic, 177 ff. 
Artavasdos, 198. 
Asceticism, 148. 
Asceticus, 491. 
Atalla, 529. 
Athanaric, 302. 
Athanasius, 45 ff., 618. 

Canons of, 133. 
„ Coptic patriarch, 614. 
„ Mar, 532. 

of Constantinople, 264 f. 
Athenagoras, 21, 284. 
Athos, Mount, 286 ff., 334. 
Augustus, 9. 
Aurelian, 178. 
Auxentius, 304. 
Awgin, 485. 

Axumitric kingdom. See Abyssinia. 
Azymites, 269. 

Babylon in Egypt, 553, 
Bagdad, 170. 
Bakar, 344. 

Baldwin, 250, 254, 258. 
Bar Cochbar, 21. 
Bardaisan, 466 ff. 
Bardas, Csesar, 234. 
Barlaam and Josaphat, 282 ff. 
Barnabas, Epistle of, 7. 
Bar Salibi, 508. 
Basil, 71ff., 158, ^34. 
Basil I., Emperor, 223. 
Basilicas, 181 ff. 
Basiliscus, 108 ff. 
I Basilius the Paulician. 227 
^27 



628 



INDEX 



Beard, the image of God, 445. 
Bef-'popoftsky, 447. 
Benediction, Position of fingers in, 
416. 

Benjamin, Coptic patriarch, 575. 
Berlin, Treaty of, 351, 
Bernard of Clairvaux, 251. 

of Tarsus, 257 f. 
Beth'Abhe, 486. 
Bible in Greek vernacular, 329. 
Bible Society, 338. 
Bielo-ozero monastery, 382. 
Bishops, privileges and duties of. 
135. 

Bogislav, Stephen, 351. 
Bogomiles, 225 ff. 
Bohemond, 249. 
Book of Governors. 484 ff, 
Boris Godunov, 379. 
Bosnia, 353. 
Britain, 13. 
Bruce's travels, 624. 
Bryennios, 342. 
Bulgaria, 348 fF. 
Bulgarian atrocities, 350. 
Burkitt, 468. 
Bury, 193. 

Byzantine Empire, Fall of, 256 ff. 
,, forces defeated, 169. 

Cabasilas, 281. 
Caliphate, 170, 585 ff. 
Calvinism, 319. 
Camel, Sultan, 254. 
Canons of Chalcedon, 135. 

Sardican, 134. 
Cantacuzenus, 265. 
Cappadocians, the, 71 ff. 
Capuchins at Astrakan, 430. 
Carbeas, 222. 
Caroline Books, 240. 
Cassian, 148. 
Catherine the Great, 434. 
Celestius, 96. 
Censer confession, 60&, 
Ceylon, 527. 
Chail I., 591. 

„ II., 593. 

„ III., 596. 

„ IV., 604. 
Chalcedon, Canons, 135. 

Council, 99 flf. 
Chaldsea, 167. 
Chaldaians, 497 ff. 
Charles the Great, 233, 294, 
Chenouda i., 594. 

„ II., 601. 
China, 527, 533 ff. 
Chosroes, I72i. 



Christ, Body of, 120. 

Byzantine, 105. 
„ Divinity of, 54, 105, 503 ff. 
„ Nature of, 93 ff., 101. 
503 ff. 

Christianity outside the Empire. 

294 ff. 
Christobulus, 602. 

Chris'^^ological controversies. Later. 

117 ff'. 
Chrysanthus, 324. 
Chrysocheir, 223. 
Chrysostom, 83 ff. 
Church organisation, 132 ff. 
Clement of Alexandria, 7. 
Cochin, 538. 
Codex Argenteus, 307. 

Carolinus, 307. 
CcEnobitism, 148. 
Commodus. 22. 
Communion office, 277. 
Confessional, 606. 
Constantinethe Great, 10, 27 ff. 
IV., 129. 
„ v., "Copronicus,"197 ff., 
341. 

VI., Porph vrogenitus, 
202, 212.' 
,, of Nacolia, 192. 
,, Pognatus, 130. 
Constantinople, founded, 29, 137. 

Disturbances at, 114. 
cai)tured by Latins, 
253. 

recovered by Palaeolo- 

gus, 260. 
taken by Turks, 270 ff. 
L Council, 82 ff. 
„ n. Council, 119, 

157. 

„ IIL Council, 125. 

,, Creed of, 83. 

Patriarchate, 137 ff., 
336. 

,, Prerogatives of, 137. 

Constantius, 59 ff., 305. 
Conybeare, 152, 216. 
Coonen cross, 530. 
Copts, 93, 138, 172, 293, 553 ff. 
Corinth pillaged, 329. 
Cosmas, 518. 
Cosmas the Student, 586. 
Council, (Ecumenical, 1st, Nicaea, 
50 ff. 

2nd, Constantinople. 
82ff., 137. 
„ 3rd, Ephesus, 96 ff. 

„ 4th, Chalcedon, 99 ff., 
543 ff., 566 ff. 



INDEX 



629 



Council, (Ecumenical, 5tli, II. Con- 
stantinople, 119 f. 
„ 6th, III. Constanti- 

nople, 130 f., 569. 
„ 7th, II. Niceea, 192, 

204. 
8th, 237. 
Creed, Apostles', 53. 

Nicene, 53, 83. 
,, of Constantinople, 83. 
Crimea, 303. 

Crosses at Travancore, 518 ff. 
Crusades, 242 ff., 609. 
Crusius, Martin, 314. 
Cydonius, Demetrius, 282. 
Cyprus, Church of, 339 If. 
Cyril Lucar, 309 flf., 411, 611. 
of Alexandria, 96 ff. 

„ of Jerusalem, 83. 

„ of Kiev, 386. 

„ of Phasis, 125 ff. 
Cyrus, Melchite patriarch, 575. 

Dacia, 302. 
Dagobert, 251, 258. 
Dalmatia, 329. 
Damascus, 169, 329. 
Dandolo, 252, 291. 
Daniel the Stylite, 111. 
Decius, 24. 

De Fide Orthodoxa, 210. 
Demetrius, deacon, 313. 
Diabekir, 498. 
Diatessaron, The, 465 f. 
IXdache, The, 16. 
Diocletian, 25 ff. 

Dionysius the Areopagite, 126, 
215. 

Dioscurus, 98, 104. 

Dmitri, 409. 

Docetism, 120. 

"Doctor, (Ecumenical," 195. 

Domitian, 19, 

Doukhobors, The, 451 ff. 

Edhesis, the, 129. 569, 576. 
Egypt, 87, 99, 137, 552 ft". 
„ Modern, 610 ff. 

Mohammedan rule in, 577 ff. 

Monophysite, 117, 565 ff. 

Persian conquest, 572 ff. 
,, Turkish period, 603 ff. 
El Aziz, 599. 
El Hakim, 244, 600. 
Elizabeth of Russia, 434. 
Encratites, 466. 
Ephraim the Syrian, 473 f. 
Epiphanius, 83, 341. 
Ermanaric, 302. 



Ethiopia, 297, 616 ff. 
Ethiopic Canon, 619. 
Eiicarpus, 157. 
Eucharist, 141 ff. 
Euchites, 225, 490 ff. 
Eudoxia, 428. 
Eugene, Prince, 329, 
Eugenios, Bulgares, 331. 
Eugenius, Pope, 265, 
Eusebius of Csesarea, 50, 53. 

,, of Nicomedia, 46. 
Eustathians, 492. 
Eustathius, 281. 
Euthymius, 225. 
Eutyches, 97 ff., 103, 562. 
Eutychianism, 94, 102, 479, 546, 

563. 

Evangelion da Mepharresche, 470. 
Extension of Christianity, 13 ff., 25 f. 

Fausta, murder of, 34. 
Figuratists, 81. 

Filioque clause, 237 ff., 266, 294. 
Firuz, 481. 

Flavian of Antioch, 89. 

,, of Constantinople, 98 ff, 
Frithigem, 302 f. 
Frumentius, 516. 
Fulco of Neuilly, 252. 
Fustat, 581. 

Gabriel, Mar, 531, 
Galerius, 25. 
Callus, 24. 
Gangra, 100. 
Garamsea, 297. 
Gaul, 13. 
Gegnoesius, 220. 
Genghis Khan, 269. 
Gennadius, 269, 282. 
George of Cappadocia, 62. 

,, Scholarius. See Gennadius. 
Georgia, Church of, 344 ff. 
Gerasimus, 389. 
Germanus, 192 ff. 
Goa, 525 ff. 

Godfrey of Bouillon, 249. 
Golitsin, Basil, 420. 
Goths, 122, 301 ff. 
Gratian, 85. 

"Great Mother," The, 10. 
Greek Church, outlying branches, 
369 ff, 

,, under Turks, 325 ff. 

Gregorius, Jacobite patriarch, 530. 
Gregory Nazianzen, 75 ff. 

„ of Nyssa, 78 ff., 93, 143 ff. 

„ the Great, 140 ff. 

„ III,, 197. 



630 



INDEX 



Gregory vii., Hildebrand, 248, 362. 
„ IX., 254. 

the Illuminator, 297, 540 ff. 
Gundaphorns, King, 511. 
Gwatkin, Professor, 43. 

Hackett, 339 ff. 
Hadrian, Emperor, 20. 

„ Pope, 203. 
Harith, 502. 
Harnack, 43. 
Harris, Rendel, 474. 
Heber, Bishop, 531. 
Hebrews, Gospel, 296, 471, 513. 
Henoticm, 112, 117, 567. 
Heraclius, 125 ff., 137, 573, 577. 
Herzegovina, 353. 
Hesychasts, 288. 
Hieracles, 565. 
Hillary of Poitiers, 241. 
Holy Synod, Greek, 336. 

,, Eussian, 425 ff. 
Homeritse, 516. 
Homoeans, 70, 305. 
Homoiousios, 68 f. 
Romoousios, 52, 75. 
Honorius, Emperor, 88. 

Pope, 128. 
Hosius, 2, 49, 50. 
Hugh of Vermandois, 249. 
Huns, 106, 223. 
Hymns, Greek, 283 ff. 
Hypostasis, 74. 

Ibas, 118, 567. 
Iberians. See Georgia. 
Ibn Tulun, 594. 
Iconoclastic reforms, 187 ff. 
Ignatius of Antioch, 20 ff. 

„ Patriarch, 209, 234. 
Image worship. Restoration of, 201 ff. 
Incarnation, 105. 
India, 512 ff. 
Innocent iii., 252, 287. 
Irene the Athenian, 203 ff. 
Isaac, Emperor, 253. 
Isho-yahbh, 489. 
Isidore, 389 ff. 
Isyaslaff, 372. 

Jacob al Bardai, 500 ff., 568. 

„ of Edessa, 507 ff. 
Jacobites, 93, 172, 500 ff. 
James of IsTisibis, 300. 
Janissaries, 310 ff. 
Jassy, 412. 
Jerome, 148. 

Jerusalem, Kingdom of, 251 ff. 
Jesu-Jabus, 494. 



Jesuits, 430, 533, 624. 
Job, Patriarch, 406. 
John, Catamerus, 258. 

,, Chrysostom, 89 ff. 

,, Chrysostom, Liturgy, 276. 

,, Maracumensis, 545. 

,, Moschus, 585. 

„ v.. Pope, 265. 

,, of Antioch, 257. 

„ of Asia, or Ephesus, 503, 506 f. 

„ of Damascus, 211, 284. 

,, of Persia, 49, 516. 

„ Prester, 535ff., 621. 

,, Semnudseus, 588. 

„ Talai, 570. 

,, the Almoner, 574. 

„ the Faster, 140. 

, , the Grammarian, 207 ff. 
Jordanus, 521. 
Joseph, Patriarch, 262, 266. 
Jovian, Emperor, 65. 
Julian, Emperor, 61 ff. 

,, of Halicarnassus, 120, 568. 
** Jumpers," The, 499 ff. 
Justin, Emperor, 117. 
Justinian, Emperor, 117 ff., 139, 181. 
Justinian ii., 220, 341. 

Kalmata, Thanksgiving, 332. 
Kenosis, 97, 103. 
Key of Truth, 216 ff. 
Khalid, 164, 168. 
Kiev, 358, 364. 
Klysty, The, 450. 
Kufa, 171. 
KuUman, 452. 

Labarum, The, 10, 35 f., 65. 
Laplanders, 383. 

Latin Empire at Constantinople, 254. 
Latrocinialis. See ' 'Robber Council. " 
Law, Roman, 29, 123. 
Layard, 496. 

Lazarus, the Painter, 208. 
Learning and literature, 279. 
Legislation, Effect of Christianity 

on, 40. 
Leo I., Emperor, 107. 
,, II., Emperor, 110. 
,, III., Emperor, the Isaurian, 
189 ff. 

,, IV., the Armenian, 204 ff. 

„ I., Pope, 99 ff,. 111, 234. 

,, III., Pope, 294. 

„ IX., Pope, 240. 

,, Stypiota, Patriarch, 228. 
Libauius, 72. 
Licinius, 34. 
Lithuania, 373, 388. 



INDEX 



631 



Liturgies, 276. 

Logos, The, 7. 

Lombards, 233. 

Louis IX. (Saint), 255 ff., 609. 

Loyola, Ignatius, 525. 

Lutheranism, 313. 

Macarius, 157. 

Monastery, 609. 
Macedonia, 82, 351. 
Macedonius, 82. 
Maghlobeen, 499. 
Magi, 299 ff. 
Malabar, 532. 
Malacca, 527. 
Mamelukes, 611 ff. 
Manuel, 251, 274. 
Marcellus, 43, 82. 
Marcian, 99, 106. 
Marcion, 149. 
Marco Polo, 520 ff. 
Marcus Aurelius, 11, 21. 
Mariolatry, 195. 
Maris, 119. 
Mark, St., 15, 554. 

„ Coptic patriarch, 593. 

„ of Ephesus, 268. 

„ Son of Kunbar, 606. 
Maronites, 131. 
Martin, 130, 264. 
Mary, The Virgin, 96, 105. 
Maxentius, 33 f. 
Maximus, 130. 
Melchitaristes, 547. 
Meletius of Antioch, 82. 

„ ofPega, 314. 
Mennas, 123. 
MeMologium, The, 429. 
Mentaxa, Nicodemus, 318. 
Mesrob, 542. 
Messenia, Senate of, 332. 
Methodius, 358. 
Metrophanes, 612. 
Metropolitans, 135 f. 
Michael i., 206. 

„ II., the Stammerer, 208. 

„ III., the Drunkard, 209. 
Antorianus, 258 ff. 

„ Cerularius, 240. 

„ the Syrian, 364. 

„ Tsar, 410. 
Milan, Edict of, 36 f. 
Milvian Bridge, 33. 
Mirdbilia, 522. 

Missionary Society, Church, 531. 
Mithra, 10, 87. 
Mobidakh, 345. 
Mossia Superior, 351. 
Mogila, Peter, 322, 411. 



Mohammed, 162 ff. 

ii., 270ff 

Mohammedan conditions for Chris- 
tians, 583. 

Mohammedanism, 93, 160. 

Molokans, The, 451 ff. 

Monasticism, 147 ff., 619. 

Monastir, 351. 

Mongolian invasion, 371 ff. 

Monophysites, 102 ff., 120 ff., 293, 
500 ff., 544, 565 ff. 

Monothelete controversy, 124ff., 568ff. 

Montanists, 22, 118, 149. 

Montenegro, 348. 

Montferrat, Marquis of, 253. 

Morea, 326, 332 ff. 

Morosini, 254, 328. 

Moscow Patriarchate, 404 ff. 

Mtykhetha, 345. 

Muir, Sir W., 163. 

"Mukaukas,"The,-578ff. 

Mutilation, 290. 

Najran, 171. 

Napoleon, Image of, 448. 
Neale, 115. 
Nectarius, 90. 
Neo-Platonists, 117. 
Nestor, 356, 576. 
Nestorianism, 94, 102. 

„ in Far East, 510 ff, 
in India, 517 ff. 
in Persia, 480. 
„ Later, 493 ff. 

Syrian, 476, 567. 
Nicsea, 50 ff., 192, 204. 
Nicephorus, Caesar, 203 ff. 
,, Emperor, 205. 
,, historian, 204. 
Nicholas, Pope, 209, 235. 
Tsar, 438. 
,, of Methone, 281, 
Nicolo Barbaro, 270. 
Nicomedia, 28. 
Nicon, 413 ff. 
Niobites, 503. 
Niphont, 373 ff. 
Nonjurors, 324. 
Nonna, 344. 
Norseses, 542. 

Novgorod Metropolitan, 406, 
Nubia, 620. 
Nunia, 297. 

" Oecumenical Bishop," 233 ff. 

,, Council. See CounoiL 

" Old Believers," 443. 
Olga, Princess, 358 ff. 
Olopan, 533. 



682 



INDEX 



Omar, 164 ff. 
Oiigenism, 7, 83, 90. 
Osrhoene, 461, 479. 
Oxyrhynchus 'papyriy 6. 

Pachomms, 156, 485. 
Paganism, Suppression of, 62. 
Pahlavi, 518. 

Palseologtis, 254, 259, 612. 
Palladius, 145, 153. 
Palut, 463. 
Palutians, 469. 
Pantsenus, 296, 513. 
Parthenon shattered, 328. 
Parthia, 296, 512. 
Paschal Controversy, 54. 
Passarovitz, Treaty of, 329. 
Patriarchate, The, 137 ff. 
Paul of Alexandria, 130. 

,, of Samosata, 52. 

,, the Armenian, 220. 
Paulicians, 207, 216 ff. 
Pechersky Monastery, 411. 
"Peculiars," The, 399. 
Persia, 97, 122, 293. 

,, origin of Christianity in, 
297 ff. 

Persian Christians, 102, 480 ff. 
Peshitta, 476, 498, 505. 
Peter Mongus, 113. 

„ the Fuller, 109 f., 341. 

„ the Great, 324, 420 ff. 

,, the Hermit, 248 f. 
Petronas, 222. 
Phanariots, 325 flf. 
Philaret Romanoff, 409. 
Philike Hetairia, 332. 
Philippoftsky, The, 448. 
Philippopolis, 224. 
Philippus, 131. 
Philo, 7. 

Phocas Nicephorus, 342. 
Photinus, 43, 82. 

Photius of Constantinople, 209, 235 ff. , 
279 f. 
the Russian, 437. 
Pictures, 184. 
Pilgrimages, 433. 
Pirates, 328. 

Pliny's correspondence, 19 f., 284. 
Pobiedonostsef, 439. 
Polycarp, 439. 
Pomortsky, The, 449. 
Pontus, 99. 

Pope, Village, 431, 435. 
Popojftsky, The, 446. 
Portuguese in India, 523 ff. 

„ in Abyssinia, 621. • 
Presbyters, 558 ff. 



I Proclus, 281. 
Procopius, 117. 
Procurator, High,. 425. 
Proterius, 106 ff. 
Protestantism, 318. 
Psellus, Michael, 280. 
Ptolemais, 97. 
Pulcheria, 99. 
Pulleni, 251. 
Pyrrhus, 129. 

Rabbulas, 475, 478. 
Ramsay, Professor, 17. 
Raskolniks, 441 ff, 
Ravenna, Exarch of, 232. 
Relics, 278. 
Richard i., 252. 
"Robber Council," 99, 543. 
Robert, Count of Flanders, 245. 

,, of Normandy, 249. 
Romanus, Diogenes, 244. 
Runners, 449. 
Rnrik, 358. 

Russia, champion of Eastern Chris- 
tianity, 329. 
,, church lands appropriated, 
434. 

,, dioceses, 366. 
„ Little, 417. 

modern, 434 ff. 

Mongolian invasion, 371 ff. 
,, name and people, 356. 

negotiations for union, 385. 
,, Origin of Christianity in, 
355 ff. 

,, possessions in Armenia, 549. 

,, protection of Georgia, 347. 

„ Revival of, 385 ff. 

,, Western culture in, 421. 
Russian calendar, 424. 

,, sects, 441 ff. 
Russkdya Pravada, 367, 398. 

Sabellianism, 42, 74. 
Saccudio, 212. 
Sacraments, 142, 274 f. 
Sacrificing, Laws against, 86. 
Said, 597. 
Saladin, 252, 608. 
San Stephano, Treaty of, 351. 
Sapor, 299 ff. 
Saracens, 223. 

Sardica, Council of, 60, 344 f. 

Satanael, 226. 

Schism, The great, 229 ff. 

Scholarship in Greece, 337. 

Scythia, 357. 

Sects, Russian, 441 ff. 

Seljuk, 244. 



INDEX 



633 



Semi-Arians, 55, 68 ff. 
Senuti, 564 ff. 

Separation, Causes of, 291 fF. 
Serapeum, 87. 
Seraphim, 437. 
Serapion, 463. 
Serenus of Marseilles, 191. 
Serfs, Emancipation of, 438. 
Sergiiis of Constantinople, 125 ff., 
167. 

the Paulician, 221. 
Servia, 351 ff. 
Severus of Antioch, 115. 
Siberia, 411. 
Silentium, 196. 
Silvanus, the Paulician, 219. 
Simeon of Thessalonica, 282. 

„ the Stylite, 155 f. 
Simony, 597. 609 ff. 
Singanfu tablet, 534 f. 
Skopsty, The, 451. 
Skreejdl, The, 417. 
Slonjebuik, The, 417. 
Societies for Biblical Study, 337 f. 

, , for Circulation of Scriptures, 
338. 

Solovetsky Monastery, 383. 
Sophia, St., 181 ff, 
Sophronius, 126, 170, 585. 
Soudan, The, 620. 
Spiritual Pastures, 585. 
Stanley, Dean, 174. 
Staro-Ohriadsti. See Raskolniks. 

, , -viery. See Raskolniks. 
Stephen of Chartres, 249. 

,, ofDore, 128. 

,, the younger, 199. 
Stoglat, The, 399. 
Streltsi, Revolt of, 423. 
Studium, 212. 
Stundists, 456 ff. 
Stylites, 153. 
Sudebuik, The, 398. 
Symmachus, 87. 
Synod, Lateran, 130, 143. 

,, of Aix la Chapelle, 82. 

,, of Antioch, 240. 

,, of Babseus, 482. 

„ of Basle, 266. 

„ of Bethlehem, 321. 

,, of Carana, 545. 

,, of Clermont, 248. 

„ of Constantinople, 82, 119, 
198. 

„ of Diamper, 519, 529. 
„ of Florence, 266 ff., 390, 
611. 

„ of Jassy, 321, 412. 

„ of Manaschiertum, 546. 



Synod of Moscow, 406. 

,, of Philippopolis, 60. 

,, of Rimini, 82. 

,, of Sardica, 60, 344 ff. 

, , of Sirmium, 82. 

„ oftheOak, 91. 

„ ofTiben, 544. 

,, of Toledo, 239. 

,, of Tyre, 239. 

,, the Holy, 419 ff. 
Syria, 99. 

Syrian Christianity, 459 ff. 

,, Christianity in India, 297, 
517 ff. 
Syropulus, 266. 

"Tall Brothers," 91. 
Tancred, 249. 
Tarasius, 203. 
Tartary, 535. 
Tatian, 149, 464. 
Thaddaeus, 293. 
Theocristus, 285. 
Theodora, 118 ff., 500. 
Theodore Graptus, 209. 

,, of Mopsuestia, 94, 118 
479. 

„ of Studium, 209 ff. 
Theodoret, 118, 567. 
Theodoric, 307. 
Theodosians, 449. 
Theodosius the Great, 77, 85. 

II., 96. 
Theodota, 205. 
Theodotus Mellisenus, 208. 
Theophanes, 196, 279, 284. 
Theophilus and the Goths, 304. 
,, Arian, 618. 
,, of Alexandria, 91. 

of Scythia, 49. 
,, the Indian, 516. 
Theophylact, 281. 
"Theotokos," The, 10, 96, 105. 
Therapeutse, 152. 
Thomas, 295. 

„ Acts of, 297, 474, 611 

540 ff. 
„ of Marga, 484 ff. 
Thouraki, 217. 
"Three Chapters," 118, 567. 
Tiben, 545. 

Timothy iElurus, 106 ff., 566. 

Salofaciolus, 108, 566. 
Timour, 269. 
Togrul, 244. 
Tolstoi, Count, 458. 
"Tome," Leo's, 100 f., 112, 232. 
Tonsure, Deathbed, 370. 
Travancore, 515 ff. 



634 



INDEX 



TreluiJc, 411. 

Trinity, 68, 74, 110, 274, 604. 

Trisagion, The, 110, 114. 

Tritheites, 504. 

Turka, 244 ff. 

Type, The, 129, 569. 

Ulfilas, 301 flF. 
Uniats, 315, 408. 

Union, Efforts towards, 263, 265, 
268 f., 407, 528 ff., 544, 611, 
624. 

"Universal Bishop," 141. 

Valens, 66 f., 85. 
Valentinian, 66. 



Veccus, 263. 

Venetian conquests, 329. 

Vladimir, 359 ff. 

Wade, Archbishop, 324. 

Xavier, Francis, 525 £ 

Yasolaf, 367. 
Yucab, 593. 

Zaras, 252. 
Zeno, 108, 341. 
Zoe, 290. 

Zoroastrianism, 10. 
Zosimus, Metropolitan, 398r 



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The International 

Critical Commentary 

On the Holy Scriptures of the Old and 

New Testaments 



EDITORS' PREFACE 

THERE are now before the public many Commentaries, 
written by British and American divines, of a popular 
or homiletical character. The Cambridge Bible for 
Schools, the Handbooks for Bible Classes and Private Students, 
The Speaker^ s Conwientary, The Popular Commentary (Schaff), 
. The Expositor'' s Bible, and other similar series, have their 
special place and importance. But they do not enter into the 
field of Critical Biblical scholarship occupied by such series of 
Commentaries as the Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum 
A. T. ; De Wette's Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zufn 
N. T. ; Meyer's Kritisch-exegetischer Kom?nentar ; Keil and 
Delitzsch's Biblischer Commentar ilber das A. T. ; Lange's 
Theologisch-homiletisches Bibelwerk ; Nowack's Handkommentar 
zum A. T. ; Holtzmann's Handkommentar zum N. T. Several 
of these have been translated, edited, and in some cases enlarged 
and adapted, for the English-speaking public ; others are in 
process of translation. But no corresponding series by British 
or American divines has hitherto been produced. The way has 
been prepared by special Commentaries by Cheyne, Ellicott, 
Kalisch, Lightfoot, Perowne, Westcott, and others; and the 
time has come, in the judgment of the projectors of this enter- 
prise, when it is practicable to combine British and American 
scholars in the production of a critical, comprehensive 
Commentary that will be abreast of modern biblical scholarship, 
and in a measure lead its van. 



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Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons of New York, and Messrs. 
T. & T. Clark of Edinburgh, propose to publish such a series 
of Commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, imder the 
editorship of Prof. C. A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., in America, and 
of Prof. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt, for the Old Testament, and 
the Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., for the New Testament, in 
Great Britain. 

The Commentaries will be international and inter-confessional, 
and will be free from polemical and ecclesiastical bias. They 
will be based upon a thorough critical study of the original texts 
of the Bible, and upon critical methods of interpretation. They 
are designed chiefly for students and clergymen, and will be 
written in a compact style. Each book will be preceded by an 
Introduction, stating the results of criticism upon it, and discuss- 
ing impartially the questions still remaining open. The details 
of criticism will appear in their proper place in the body of the 
Commentary. Each section of the Text will be introduced 
with a paraphrase, or summary of contents. Technical details 
of textual and philological criticism will, as a rule, be kept 
distinct from matter of a more general character ; and in the 
Old Testament the exegetical notes will be arranged, as far as 
possible, so as to be serviceable to students not acquainted with 
Hebrew. The History of Interpretation of the Books will be 
dealt with, when necessary, in the Introductions, with critical 
notices of the most important literature of the subject. Historical 
and Archaeological questions, as well as questions of Biblical 
Theology, are included in the plan of the Commentaries, but 
not Practical or Homiletical Exegesis. The Volumes will con- 
stitute a uniform series. 



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ARRANGEMENT OF VOLUMES AND AUTHORS 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 

GENESIS. The Rev. John Skinner, D.D., Principal and Professor of 
Old Testament Language and Literature, College of Presbyterian Church 
of England, Cambridge, England. 

EXODUS. The Rev. A. R. S. Kennedy, D.D., Professor of Hebrew, 
University of Edinburgh. 

LEVITICUS. J. F. Stenning, M.A., Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. 

NUMBERS. The Rev. G. BUCHANAN Gray, D.D., Professor of Hebrew, 
Mansfield College, Oxford. [Now Ready. 

DEUTERONOMY. The Rev. S. R. DRIVER, D.D., D.Litt., Regius Pro- 
fessor of Hebrew, Oxford. [Now Ready. 

JOSHUA. The Rev, George Adam Smith, D.D., LL.D., Professor of 

Hebrew, United Free Church College, Glasgow. 

JUDGES. The Rev. George Moore, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Theol- 
ogy, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. {Now Ready. 

SAMUEL. The Rev. H. P. Smith, D.D., Professor of Old Testament 
Literature and History of Religion, Meadville, Pa. [Now Ready. 

KINGS. The Rev. Francis Brown, D.D., D.Litt., LL.D., President 
and Professor of Hebrew and Cognate Languages, Union Theological 

Seminary, New York City. 

CHRONICLES. The Rev. Edward L. Curtis, D.D., Professor of 
Hebrew, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. 

EZRA AND NEHEMIAH. The Rev. L.W. BATTEN, Ph.D., D.D., Rector 
of St. Mark's Church, New York City, sometime Professor of Hebrew, 
P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia. 

PSALMS. The Rev. Chas. A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., Graduate Pro- 
fessor of Theological Encyclopaedia and Symbolics, Union Theological 
Seminary, New York. {2 vols. Now Read-" 

PROVERBS. The Rev. C. H. Toy, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Hebrew. 
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. [Now Ready, 

JOB. The Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius Professor of He- 
brew, Oxford. 



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ISAIAH. Chaps. I-XXXIX. The Rev. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D., 
Professor of Hebrew, Mansfield College, Oxford. 

ISAIAH. Chaps. XL-LXVI. The Rev. A. S. Peake, M. A., D.D. , Dean 
of the Theological Faculty of the Victoria University and Professor of 
Biblical Exegesis in the University of Manchester, England. 

vIEREMIAH. The Rev. A. F. Kirkpatrick, D.D. , Dean of Ely, sometime 
Regius Professor of Hebrew, Cambridge, England. 

EZEKIEL. The Rev. G. A. CooKE, M.A., Oriel Professor of the Inter- 
pretation of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford, and the Rev. Charles F. 
BuRNEY, D. Litt., Fellow and Lecturer in Hebrew, St. John's College, Oxford. 

DANIEL. The Rev. John P. Peters, Ph.D., D.D., sometime Professor 
of Hebrew, P, E. Divinity School, Philadelphia, now Rector of St. 
Michael's Church, New York City. 

AMOS AND HOSEA. W. R. Harper, Ph.D., LL.D., sometime Presi- 
dent of the University of Chicago, Illinois. \^Now Ready. 

MICAH TO HAGGAI. Prof. JOHN P. Smith, University of Chicago; 
Prof. Charles P. Fagnani, D.D., Union Theological Seminary, New 
York; W. Hayes Ward, D.D., LL.D., Editor of The Independent, New 
York; Prof. Julius A. Bewer. Union Theological Seminary, New York, 
and Prof. H. G. Mitchell, D.D., Boston University. 

ZECHARIAH TO JONAH. Prof. H. G, Mitchell, D.D., Prof. John 
P. Smith and Prof. J. A. Bewer. 

ESTHER. The Rev. L. B. Baton, Ph.D., Professor of Hebrew, Hart- 
ford Theological Seminary. ^Noiv Ready. 

ECCLESIASTES. Prof. GeorCxE A. Barton, Ph.D., Professor of Bibli- 
cal Literature, Bryn Mawr College, Pa. ^ATow Ready. 

RUTH, SONG OF SONGS AND LAMENTATIONS. Rev. CHARLES A. 
Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., Professor of Theological Encyclopaedia and Sym- 
bolics, Union Theological Seminary, New York. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 

ST. MATTHEW. The Rev. Willoughby C. Allen, M.A., Fellow and 
Lecturer in Theology and Hebrew, Exeter College, Oxford. \Now Ready. 

ST. MARK. Rev. E. P. Gould, D.D., sometime Professor of New Testa- 
ment Literature, P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia. ^^Now Ready. 



ST. LUKE. The Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., sometime Master of 
University College, Durham, \Now Ready. 



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ST. JOHN. The Very Rev. John Henry Bernard, D.D., Dean of St. 
Patrick's and Lecturer in Divinity, University of Dublin. 

HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. The Rev. William Sanday, D.D., 
LL.D., Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Oxford, ana the Rev. WiL- 
LOUGHBY C. Allen, M.A,, Fellow and Lecturer in Divinity and Hebrew, 
Exeter College, Oxford. 

ACTS. The Rev. C. H. Turner, D.D., Fellow of Magdalen College, 
Oxford, and the Rev. H. N. Bate, M.A., Exanaining Chaplain to the 
Bishop of London. 

ROMANS. The Rev. William Sanday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret 
Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and the Rev. 
A. C. Headlam, M.A., D.D., Principal of King's College, London. 

l^A^ow Ready. 

CORiNTHIANS. The Right Rev. Arch. Robertson, D.D., LL.D., Lord 

Bishop of Exeter, the Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D.,and Dawson Walker, 
D.D., Theological Tutor in the University of Durham. 

GALATIANS. The Rev. Ernest D. Burton, D.D., Professor of New 
Testament Literature, University of Chicago. 

EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS. The Rev. T. K. Abbott, B.D., 
D. Litt., sometime Professor of Biblical Greek, Trinity College, Dublin, now 
Librarian of the same. [Nozu Ready. 

PHILIPPIANS AND PH5LEMON. The Rev. Marvin R. Vincent, 
D. D., Professor of Biblical Literature, Union Theological Seminary, New 
York City. [Now Ready. 

THESSALONIANS. The Rev. James E. Frame, ALA., Professor of 
Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York. 

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. The Rev. Walter Lock, D.D., Warden 
of Keble College and Professor of Exegesis, Oxford. 

HEBREWS. The Rev. A. Nairne, M.A., Professor of Hebrew in King's 
College, London. 

ST. JAMES. The Rev. James H. Ropes, D.D., Bussey Professor of New 
Testament Criticism in Harvard University. 

PETER AND JUDE. The Rev. CHARLES BiGG, D.D., sometime Regius 
Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. 

\_A^ow Ready. 

THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. The Rev. E. A. Brooke, B.D., Fellow 
and Divinity Lecturer in King's College, Cambridge. 

REVELATION. The Rev. ROBERT H. CHARLES, M.A., D.D., sometime 
I'ruiessor of Biblical Greek in the University of Dublin. 



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Deuteronomy. By the Rev. S. R. driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius 
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Judges. By Rev. George Foot Moore, D.D., LL.D., Professor of 
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The Books of Samuel. By Rev. Hexry Preserved Smith, D.D., 

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Proverbs. By the Rev. Crawford H. Toy, D.D., LL.D., Professor of 
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Esther. By L. B. Paton, Ph.D., Professor of Hebrew, Hartford 
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Ecclesiastes. Bv George A. Barton, Ph.D., Professor of Biblical 
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St. Matthew. By the Rev. Willoughby C. Allen, M.A., Fellow 
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St. Mark. By the Rev. E. P. Gould, D.D., sometime Professor of New 
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St. Luke. By the Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., sometime Master of 
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Romans. By the Rev. William S.anday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret 
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" We do not hesitate to commend this as the best commentary on Romans 
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Ephesians and Golossians. By the Rev. t. k. abbott, d.d., 

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of these two great monuments of Pauline teaching." — The Expositor. 



Philippians and Philemon. By Rev. Marvin R. Vincent, D.D., 

Professor of Biblical Literature in Union Theological Seminary, New York. 

" Professor Vincent's Commentary appears to me not less admirable for 
its literary merit than for its scholarship and its clear and discriminating 
discussions of the contents of these Epistles." — Dr. George P. Fisher. 



St. Peter and St. Jude. By the Rev. Charles Bigg, D.D., 
sometime Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University, 
New York. 

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